Vmware is a strong, proprietary company, but it has always shown a lot of finesse when it comes to dealing with Linux and open source developers. It promotes virtual appliances, most of which are built using Linux. Early on the company made sure its VMware Server and ESX hypervisor ran on Linux, and it's quick to tout the advantages of building virtual machines on top of a Linux host and running it as the guest operating system. XenSource, now part of Citrix Systems, has been the mainstay of the leading open source hypervisor, Xen. Unlike other open source companies, it has always shown an affinity for working with Microsoft. Why do these two market leaders run contrary to the normal proprietary-versus-open source dichotomy? My conclusion: With virtualization companies, as with virtualization software itself, everything isn't always as it seems. VMware chief scientist Mendel Ros-enblum's drive to virtualize the x86 environment was aimed at opening up the industry's base of cheap computer hardware. Through virtualization, any x86-compatible OS could sit above an indifferent hypervisor. Virtualization helped neutralize Windows' stranglehold on cheap hardware, and Rosen-blum's brainy speeches on the potential of virtualization warmed many an open source developer's heart.
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