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by dspillett 1548 days ago
> Guest additions (what I think you meant) is GPLv2

It is presumably referring to “VirtualBox 6.1.32 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack”:

> Support for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 devices, VirtualBox RDP, disk encryption, NVMe and PXE boot for Intel cards.

> The Extension Pack binaries are released under the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL).

ref: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
1 comments
rrego 1548 days ago
The difficulty in distinguishing the two is likely intentional. At my previous org, Oracle sent a spreadsheet of IPs to my company's compliance department which they claimed were using the extension pack and so violated their license agreement. They demanded proof of the license.

The vast majority including I, only ever used guest additions (GPL).

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dspillett 1547 days ago
> The difficulty in distinguishing the two is likely intentional.

That would not surprise me. Back when we were considering virtualisers many years ago, the issue was one of the reasons² I recommended against vbox despite using it at home - it felt a bit too dark-patterny¹ for my tastes. We went with a VMWare tool instead.

[1] though I'm not sure the term “dark pattern” had been coined, or if it had it was in my vocab, at that point

[2] another being Oracles general behaviour at the time - this was after their purchase of Sun and therefore Virtual Box.

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