Re: [Qemu-devel] FreeOSZoo will stop March 1, 2005

[Brad Campbell]

Daniel Egger wrote:
> On 12.02.2005, at 11:18, Brad Campbell wrote:
>
> > > Following Fabrice decision to transform QEMU into a proprietary 
> > > closed solution without any kind of future, I don't find any reason 
> > > to loose my company time and money fostering FreeOSZoo.
>
>
> > Woah.. what a severe knee jerk reaction based on nothing. Perhaps 
> > before throwing your toys out of the pram, taking your bat and ball 
> > and heading home you might actually wait for a reply from Fabrice 
> > clarifying his intentions?
>
>
> Your reply is pretty much bollocks. In the same way Fabrice is
> free to start commercialising his smart product QEmu, no matter
> what the intentions behind that action are, Jean-Michel is free
> to stop his contribution to QEmu.

Indeed. My reply was more along the lines of waiting to find out exactly what is going on prior to 
chucking a wobbly.

> [1] For instance it will at the moment only compile on certain
>     Linux systems while OS X and Windows are still broke. Also
>     kqemu will only work on 32bit x86 Linux kernels which means
>     that a constantly increasing number of people of x86_64 users
>     will not be able to benefit from the advantages. I for one
>     will have to stick to qemu-fast for the time being because I
>     certainly have no intention to reboot my Dual-Opteron into
>     pure 32bit mode every time I want to use qemu; mind you that
>     SMP on x86_64 does not work too well in 32bit mode.

If you recall, the stated objective was to speed up x86 on x86, this meets the stated objective. 
Where is the problem? If you want to improve x86 on x86_64, then work on it. keqmu is alpha software 
at the moment. It was plainly stated that it will only work on x86 Linux kernels at present, but 
other hosts may follow. Give the guy a break before you bust his balls.

Can qemu-fast run anything other than free operating systems? The tested target 
for kqemu was win2k.
Everything has a reason, and I'm sure all will become clear in good time. Stop 
jumping to conclusions.

<quote>
KQEMU is _not_ open source as the rest of QEMU. It is a proprietary kernel module (read the LICENSE 
file) and will stay so until a gentle company decides to subsidy the QEMU project.

KQEMU usage is optional: you can disable it at compilation or run time, so no 
one is forced to use it.
</quote>

So don't use that part of the emulator. Simple.

<My own opinion ahead, take with sack of salt>

What is being built here is a system that will rival vmware. Doing this takes time and at the moment 
there are several companies watching qemu with an eye to using it as the core of their technology. 
(As they can with the current license). If Fabrice releases the accelerator under the same license 
as the rest of the project, these companies have no incentive to contribute financially to the 
project. Simple. It's a lever. I'm quite sure that in time, someone is going to value the product 
highly enough to pay for it, which in turn will allow the opening of the source. All in good time.

In the mean time, deal with it. Use it if you want to (I am and it's great). If you don't, then do 
what you were doing before. If you can't use it because it just does not work for your particular 
application, talk to Fabrice about helping out perhaps.

It's under development, the rest will come with time.

</My opinion>

Brad
--
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