Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 1/5] RFC: Efficient VM backup for qemu (v1)

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 11:26:21AM +0000, Dietmar Maurer wrote:
> > Did you look at the VMDK "Stream-Optimized Compressed" subformat?
> > 
> > http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vddk/vmdk_50_technote.pdf?
> > src=vmdk
> > 
> > It is a stream of compressed "grains" (data).  They are out-of-order and 
> > each
> > grain comes with the virtual disk lba where the data should be visible to 
> > the
> > guest.
> > 
> 
> What kind of license is applied to that specification?

The document I linked came straight from Google Search and you don't
need to agree to anything to view it.  The document doesn't seem to
impose restrictions.  QEMU has supported the VMDK format and so have
other open source tools for a number of years.

For anything more specific you could search VMware's website and/or
check with a lawyer.

Stefan