[Devel] OpenVZ and Virtuozzo

[Kir Kolyshkin]

Martin Braun wrote:

> Kirill Korotaev wrote:
>
>> w/o 99% of the tools, SDKs, APIs, documentation, support and so on 
>> and so forth.
>
>
> The question is, will SWSoft stop their engagement to OVZ if
> it gets too close to the VZ feature list to avoid a loss of
> customers. The main developers are mostly SWSoft people at the
> moment. So if SWSoft stops supporting OVZ the project may be
> at risk.

Martin,

That is great that you have the concerns and do care about the future of 
OpenVZ project -- I do as well. Let me share some thoughts on the topic.

First, this *is* free software, means that nobody really owns controls 
it, even the original creators and current maintainers of the code -- 
SWsoft. This is the beauty of free software, this is why we love it.

Free software nature of the code in question makes a big difference from 
the (hypothetical) situation like, say, "VMware realizes that their 
free-as-in-beer "Player" (or "Server") product ruins the market for them 
and considering to discontinue it". That would be the problem indeed.

Second, I believe SWsoft has a strong vision and high level of 
commitment towards OpenVZ. As I have noticed in my recent email, opening 
up a live migration feature demonstrates their good will and overall 
direction. I think they are quite happy with the fact more people use 
OpenVZ, or Linux-VServer, or Xen, for that matter -- because that means 
more people are seeing what "light-weight" virtualization can do for 
them, in what ways in can be helpful and why it is needed at all. And 
this is actually how things are working -- over time, technology itself 
becomes commodotized: consider, for example, big and pricey UNIX vendors 
shifted by Linux, or big and pricey RDBMS vendors shifted by open-source 
solutions such as MySQL and Postgres. Still, all those big companies (or 
most of them) are still alive and happy, because it's not just the 
technology, but a handful of other factors involved in doing business in 
IT. Licensing, support, features, high-level tools, strategic 
partnerships and all that stuff.

Third, speaking of competition of OpenVZ and Virtuozzo -- OpenVZ is 
actually ahead of Virtuozzo for some areas, it is not like "step-child" 
or "Cinderella" of SWsoft/Virtuozzo. Here are a couple of examples.

- Fedora Core 5 templates are not there in Virtuozzo yet. Gentoo 
templates are not there (and will probably never be).

- OpenVZ was the first to get that OS template management tools based on 
yum (so people who used both OpenVZ and Virtuozzo says "wow! template 
management is much better in OpenVZ!").

- OpenVZ offers 2.6.16-based kernels, and kernels based on FC5 and 
SUSE10 kernels -- you can't get it from Virtuozzo.

You might thing it is a green and easy world as I take it. But this is 
just the way I see it -- and I do care as much for the future of OpenVZ 
as for my own children.

Regards,
  Kir, OpenVZ project lead.