[Devel] Re: OpenVZ and Virtuozzo

[dev]

>> 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.
>>
>
> I wonder what the OVZ project would do if some company used OVZ as the
>> core for their own product that provided that "99% of the tools, SDKs,
> APIs, documentation, and support" and became a direct competitor to
> Virtuozzo itself. Has SWSoft considered that scenario and if so what
> was the conclusion? As long as all changes to the core OVZ code are
> made public it does not appear to violate the OVZ license as it is
> licensed under the GPL.

Matt,

Here is my personal opinion about this.

First about the scenario:
1. It should take a long time to do what you propose from a third party
company, a long time to investigate the code and a long time before they
actually ship something. During this period we will further enhance our
tools etc.

On the other hand, the competition is really good as it makes us move.

And if someone makes an open-source solution based on OpenVZ, we will bless it and help it as much as we can.

2. Maintaining the code which is not yours is a real pain.
No control of sources/interfaces, no knowledge of its functioning etc.
And if you fork, you need to do future porting to newer
kernels/platforms yourself. And implement new features!
Take a look at RHEL. There is a free CentOS build from RHEL sources,
but it is not a business.

3. From my POV, companies are unlikely to buy the product from such a reseller. It is a question of risks and for most big companies it is unacceptable. Do we observe any companies reselling Qt, RHEL, mysql? I suppose the entrance cost is just too high. IMHO.

Next, I must note, that OpenVZ project brings too much value
for SWsoft to drop the public support for it. Bug reports,
broad technology testing, feature requests helping to make it better, people awareness, knowledgebase, 3rd party tools, discussions etc.