proprietary software is obsolete

Nov 03 2007

VMWare feels the heat

Lots of people are commenting on VMWare's vision on Open Source
With statements like
What we want to do is fund ourselves to be able to build new stuff. If you're purely open source, there is no way you can do new stuff.
you'll lose credibility pretty fast.
It's clear that proprietary software companies can't keep up with the speed of open source development so they need to spread more FUD on a daily base.

Half a decade ago Open Source indeed was catching up on proprietary software and trying to implement features that the other side already had. We have long passed that moment .. Xen and KVM are the technology leaders of the pack. The rest is trying to keep up. (And it's not only in the Virtualisation area that we see this evolution)

Yes VMWare does similar things under the hood with a more fancy GUI as Tarry notes but in a way indeed they are heading the way Microsoft showed them they way. Or aren't they..? Apple did nothing really new with the iPod, apart from its slick interface. But today Apple is feeling the heath from people not wanting their DRM, wanting to play OGG , and people wanting to use their device from non Apple platforms.
So people clearly want something more open, not one tool that locks them in with a vendor. If you really are looking for a GUI to manage your platforms you'd better choose for one that can manage them all