Brian McKenna wrote:
I think the problem here is that CentOS isn't designed for personal use, nor do many of us feel that a binary only application should be included when a perfectly fine open source version is available. Also, I personally feel that the full version is more crippled than the open source version.
If you mean crippled in the sense that it is not redistributable and you don't get the source code, then OK and I agree ... otherwise I think you are mixing up the versions :-D
Maybe there should be a separate package for the full edition, though. I can't see any harm coming from that.
The FULL version is the one that is available from the site as an RPM (VirtualBox-1.5.4_27034_rhel5-1.i586.rpm) and is the binary only app. It is *_NOT_OPEN_SOURCE_* and *_NOT_REDISTRIBUTABLE_*. That version has all the bells and whistles (usb, iSCSI support, RDP Support, etc.). That version is only available for personal use and not available for use in businesses without a paid license, there is no SRPM for it.
The Open Source Edition (OSE) is the tarball that is not an RPM:
http://www.virtualbox.org/download/1.5.4/VirtualBox-1.5.4_OSE.tar.bz2
It is integrated into ubuntu, gentoo, debian unstable and maybe some others, is open source (GPLv2), and it is usable by everyone. It does not have an RPM or binary available from the site (the tarball is Source aonly files that need compiled) and it does not have usb, iSCSI, RDP, support.
To make this OSE version into an RPM will take some work, but I personally would not use it very much as I would probably need usb and rdp support for any VM I create ... so that is why I brought it up.
See this for any questions:
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions
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Thanks, Johnny Hughes