There has been a lot of fuss about Microsoft’s virtualization licensing and distribution policies. The biggest player in this market (and properbly the most affected), VMware, is pissed and posted a whitepaper with their 7 complaints.
 VMware seven objections are:
1) Microsoft offers top virtualization support for only premier-level support customers, inherently limiting the ability for many customers to get technical support for competitive virtualization platforms;2)Â Microsoft’s “restrictive terms” on the use of published virtual machines, or appliances, is unfair to users. Microsoft, VMware claims, restricts use of VHD formatted virtual machines to Microsoft Virtual Server and Virtual PC only;
3) Microsoft restricts customer choice by configuring its VHD virtual machines to de-activate if they are run on any virtualization offering other than Virtual PC or Virtual Server;
4)Â Microsoft’s VHD licensing agreement prevents users from converting the VHD format into any virtual machine format, thus preventing compatibility with competitive platform and preventing translations into VMware’s formats;
5)Â Microsoft’s licensing policies discriminate against use of VMware’s Vmotion and other virtualization management platforms that enable users to move virtual machines from one platform to another. VMware cites one policy that requires “permanent assignment” of operating system licenses to specific systems and simultaneously restricts the movement of those operating system licenses. VMware claims that one policy, for example, is designed to restrict movement of Windows server licenses more than once every quarter.
6)Â Microsoft imposes significant restrictions on desktop virtualization including the movement of desktop virtual machines, restrictions on OEM versions of Windows, and restrictions on virtualization on Windows Vista. VMware charges that this makes it difficult if not impossible for end users to choose competitive platforms. VMware attempts to back its case by pointing out that VMware once had an OEM license to redistribute Windows in a VMware VM but has not been able to renew that since 2003.
7)Â Finally, VMware claims that Microsoft’s virtualization APIs for Longhorn are proprietary. The APIs handle communication between Windows and the Microsoft hypervisor. VMware said Microsoft opened up three virtualization APIs last June but they cannot be used by virtualization vendors.
Does this mean we can put virtualization in the same category as the browser and the mediaplayer?…..
Entries (RSS)
March 3rd, 2007 at 12:02 am
This is very anti-competitive behavior. Only legal actions can make Microsoft play by rules.