Johnny Hughes wrote: > 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. > This was the reason I wanted to use the OSE (GPLv2) version--I was working with some people who needed to support a Windows Server 2003 virtual machine, and by using VirtualBox OSE they only had to worry about licensing Windows (?!) as opposed to BOTH Windows AND VMware Server. I also think it's nice to have a ready-to-download GPL version because it provides a mechanism where people who don't have Xen-ready hardware can experiment with virtualization, and it's much smaller (but admittedly far less capable) than VMware Server... > 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. > I've made a stab at some of this work, as posted previously: http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-virt/2007-November/000106.html One of the things I wanted to change from the commercial version was to make use of DKMS to build the kernel module(s) automagically. > See this for any questions: > > http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions > > <snip> > > Thanks, > Johnny Hughes > -Greg