[StevePerkins]

With Oracle's rocky reputation around open source, I'm surprised that VirutalBox is still going strong and under active development. There doesn't seem to be any kind of commercial "enterprise version" that they license for big bucks... what is their incentive for keeping this thing going?

[FireBeyond]

It's also made even uglier by the fact that VMware has discontinued Fusion, and Parallels (at least in the Vagrant, etc, ecosystem) has always been a second class citizen).

Not to mention that Parallels licensing is a pain. I understand license key activation as at times a necessary evil but in cases where you are developing a product for use primarily by developers who may frequently re-install their computer, could you at least do some form of trivial hardware checksumming? I had to call support because I'd exceeded five activations of my license. They reset it, after asking why. Several months later, same situation - this time they refused to reset the activation counter. Once loyal customer, no longer, when you refuse to activate software for the purchaser.

Thankfully, Docker et al seem to be making some good strides at making use of Hyve based virtualization in the OS X realm. I'm excited to see how that progresses.

[andrewf]

Veertu exists now - it's in the app store, and uses Apple's Hypervisor.framework (just like Docker for Mac). I purchased it because having Apple supply the in-kernel virtualization component strikes me at the Right Thing (tm). Veertu runs a 2D Windows desktop fine, but it does seem slower - I guess they haven't matured a full stack of accelerated virtual graphics drivers etc.

[cpr]

Hadn't heard about Fusion. Not exactly discontinued, but the signs don't look good, either:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/27/vmware_fusion_and_wo...

Agree about Docker using built-in macOS virtualization. Quite hopeful.

[arthurfm]

> It's also made even uglier by the fact that VMware has discontinued Fusion

It doesn't look like Fusion has been discontinued. [1]

"The Fusion and Workstation teams are having a very busy year. Since we shipped Fusion 8 and Workstation 12 almost a year ago, we’ve been busy adding new skills to the development teams so that we can take the products in a new and compelling direction. Added to that, the team has released several updates that you really should be loading on to your systems – they make the products better in a bunch of ways that are described here, here and here."

[1] http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2016/07/meet-the-team.htm...

[tw04]

My understanding is they gutted the entire fusion and workstation teams (firing all US employees), and shipped it over to China for long-term maintenance. That blog post kind of confirms it... the core team working on ESX is in the US, the "Hosted-UI" - fusion and workstation teams - all appear to be Chinese. To say that the core ESX components are the base and the Hosted-UI team just puts a UI on top seems preposterous to me. If that's the case I would expect a lockstep release of all the products, and the same feature functionality if all they're doing is adding a GUI. That's simply not the case.

[Scarbutt]

From where do you get vmware fusion was discontinued?

[kgwgk]

At least the people behind it is gone. I was discussed in HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10978672

[frostmatthew]

> the people behind it is gone

Development switched to different people/teams but that doesn't mean it's not under active development. Meet the new team: http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2016/07/meet-the-team.ht...

[kgwgk]

Great, I'm glad Fusion is alive.

[xenadu02]

Management fired the entire HostesUI team and shipped bare-minimum maintenance to India.

[frostmatthew]

> shipped bare-minimum maintenance to India

The development team is not in India and is doing more than bare-minimum maintenance, they have "a great surprise lined up for Q3, something very interesting for Q4, and something very big for H1"[1]

[1] http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2016/07/meet-the-team.ht...

[frostmatthew]

> It's also made even uglier by the fact that VMware has discontinued Fusion

As I commented elsewhere[1] (and in more detail) in this thread Fusion/Workstation is not discontinued/abandoned.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12085845

[tobias3]

You have to buy Oracle VM VirtualBox (i.e. the enterprise version) to use the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack (USB 2.0+3.0 support) commercially.

[davweb]

This isn't completely true. You can use it for free commercially as long as you install it yourself. The Licensing FAQ [1] says:

> Also, if you install it on your work PC at some large company, this is still personal use. However, if you are an administrator and want to deploy it to the 500 desktops in your company, this would no longer qualify as personal use.

[1] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ

[a3n]

VirtualBox is last in the alphabet. We're safe for awhile.

[_pmf_]

Hush. Don't give them ideas.

[berns]

Interesting, I searched for the "enterprise version" on shop.oracle.com. It's listed at USD 1,000 / socket.