Virtualization was big in '06, and it's shaping up to be huge in '07. The first company to make big news in the new year is one we're not so familiar with: Germany's
InnoTek. What's the fuss? InnoTek has unexpectedly
open sourced its VirtualBox virtualization software. VirtualBox looks like a pretty mature virtualization tool that runs on Windows and Linux and supports Windows (including Vista), Linux, OS/2 Warp, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD as guest operating systems. Like many companies have done, InnoTek has split its product into
two editions: An open source version and a "full" version with additional features aimed at enterprise customers. The latter is still free for personal use, but its source is closed. From the screenshots, it looks like VirtualBox has a pretty featureful GUI, which is something I miss with VMware Player.
Tags: innotek, open source, OpenSource, virtualbox, virtualization
