VMWare, who once owned the virtualization market, has been under pressure from free alternatives and pre-installed options like Microsoft Hyper-V, which is included with the latest version of Windows Server.

These offerings have created an easier and/or cheaper place for previous VMWare customers to go. Presumably in response to this, VMWare has decided to open-source VMWare View under the LGPL.

Though I admit that server virtualization is not my area of expertise, this seems like a good move for VMWare, and one that I hope they will continue. Now that View is open-source, enterprise customers are able to modify and customize it to their needs, making it potentially a more attractive option than a fixed configuration like Microsoft’s Hyper-V. Still, VMWare isn’t the only virtualization software maker with open-source products (notably VirtualBox on the desktop side), so this move doesn’t instantly fix their problems.

It’s good to see another major enterprise (and, actually, desktop too) software vendor embracing open-source software and its advantages. I hope that this proves a good move for VMWare and they decide to continue open-sourcing their products.

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