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VirtualBox 6.0 released

virtualbox.org

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Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#171

Post by plq »

chomp wrote: post #131
setquk wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any public references for this anywhere?

Personal anecdote: They came after us, since the extension phones home and they could track it to our ASN. Asked us for an audit of all installs of VB. The idea was that they wanted to then charge us big money for a corporate license. Instead, IT banned it enterprise-wide. Which is sad, because we like it for Vagrant. We've since started moving all of our developer stuff to OpenShift, so we're not totally up a creek.

Why not use KVM via vagrant-libvirt? It's pretty easy to set up and works like a charm. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18727059

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#172

Post by sound1 »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #128
organsnyder wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extension pack is extremely easy to download by accident: for instance, it comes in the default Chocolately installation unless you pass a flag to disable it. With Oracle actively going around and sending threatening letters to enterprises with extensions download traffic coming from their IP blocks, it's easy to accidentally get in a bad situation.

This is separate from the guest extensions ISO image, right? What kind of functionality do the extensions discussed here cover?

I would love to know thw answer to above question

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#173

Post by MaupitiBlue »

torstenvl wrote: post #159
amyjess wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in a one-party state, secretly record them and then if Oracle threatens to sue, show them the recording and remind them of promissory estoppel. (IANAL!)

Not really promissory estoppel, which can enforce a promise if you detrimentally relied on it. It's not really to your detriment to use the product for free, so it's not a perfect fit (unless maybe your company hired someone to administer the VMs, specifically based on his VirtualBox experience?). Some other possibilities would be the parol evidence rule (verbal exchanges between the contracting parties and their eff…

I think amyjess is right.

From the Restatement Second:

§ 90. Promise Reasonably Inducing Action or Forbearance

(1) A promise which the promisor should reasonably expect to induce action or forbearance on the part of the promisee or a third person and which does induce such action or forbearance is binding if injustice can be avoided only by enforcement of the promise. The remedy granted for breach may be limited as justice requires.

If Oracle says "go ahead and use it" and then sues you for having used it, they lose. If they sue you to stop using it going forward, they win.

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#174

Post by alpinewinter »

gruez wrote: post #137
alpinewinter wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of any public references, but I can confirm this is happening to government entities as well. Oracle is being extremely aggressive and mounting what is essentially a phishing campaign against organizations that it sees accessing the extension download page. They are e-mailing employees directly and asking them to contact Oracle.

>Oracle is being extremely aggressive and mounting what is essentially a phishing campaign against organizations that it sees accessing the extension download page. They are e-mailing employees directly and asking them to contact Oracle. You have a very broad definition of "phishing".

Probably not the strict definition, but they are looking for information from employees they can use as leverage or in a lawsuit against the organization.

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#175

Post by zten »

octopoc wrote: post #45
bakery2k wrote: post #43

Is anyone using VirtualBox on the desktop? Specifically, to run Linux/macOS/Windows guests on a macOS host? Would you recommend it? Or is the best option VMware Fusion, Parallels, or something else?

I recently got a Mac and wanted to avoid the cost of Parallels, so I tried VirtualBox first. It was insanely slow. Like, I would be typing text into a VM and I would type a line, then wait and watch the characters appear. This happened on a 2018 Macbook Pro host with 32GB RAM. This happened on both Windows and Ubuntu guests. So, I tried Parallels and it was so fast I can't really tell the difference between the host…

Parallels is great. I like it so much that I bought the subscription, and I don't even use my Windows VM all that much.

However, sadly, third-party software that spins up VMs tends to avoid supporting Parallels. I recall Vagrant having a sub-par Parallels provider (compared to the paid VMware Fusion support), and even minikube went with VMware Fusion instead. https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/220

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#176

Post by jweir »

robert_foss wrote: post #10

Avoid VirtualBox and becoming trapped in the non-free & personal use only extension by using one of the very decent open source alternatives Boxes[1] or virt-manager[2] [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Boxes [2] https://virt-manager.org/

To be clear, VirtualBox and Guest Additions are open source. It is only the Extension Pack which is licensed. No?

Until today I had never even heard of the Extension pack, and have never had any need to use it.

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#177

Post by lambda »

chomp wrote: post #131
setquk wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any public references for this anywhere?

Personal anecdote: They came after us, since the extension phones home and they could track it to our ASN. Asked us for an audit of all installs of VB. The idea was that they wanted to then charge us big money for a corporate license. Instead, IT banned it enterprise-wide. Which is sad, because we like it for Vagrant. We've since started moving all of our developer stuff to OpenShift, so we're not totally up a creek.

Oh, wow. They've also changed the license a couple of times in 2016 and 2017 to make it more restrictive.

Early 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160411070811/https://www.virtu... Late 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20161208112443/https://www.virtu... Current, last changed July 2017: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox_PUEL

In the earlier licenses, "personal use" was just defined as the person using it being the same person as who installed it, and only one person remotely accessing the desktop at a time. So I had interpreted this as being OK for developer VMs in which the developer installs it themselves and uses it for their own development purposes. It also contained an "evaluation use" with a vaguely defined period.

The current license now defines "personal use" as explicitly non-commercial use, and adds more restrictions on client access that applies to any type of clients and not just remote desktop access, as well as explicitly defining the evaluation use period to being 30 days.

So while I didn't really have a concern about developers using VirtualBox with the extension pack previously, given the new license and the fact that they seem to be enforcing it via phoning home, it looks like it's time to set a policy of no one using it.

Luckily, we've already pretty much transitioned everything over to libvirt/KVM on Linux hosts, and people have generally been using VMWare or VMWare Fusion on Windows and Mac hosts.

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#178

Post by tracker1 »

phamilton wrote: post #168
gruez wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Oracle is being extremely aggressive and mounting what is essentially a phishing campaign against organizations that it sees accessing the extension download page. They are e-mailing employees directly and asking them to contact Oracle. You have a very broad definition of "phishing".

> They are e-mailing employees directly and asking them to contact Oracle That would certainly look a lot like phishing

In this case, I think it's actual fishing...

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#179

Post by jstarfish »

gruez wrote: post #137
alpinewinter wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of any public references, but I can confirm this is happening to government entities as well. Oracle is being extremely aggressive and mounting what is essentially a phishing campaign against organizations that it sees accessing the extension download page. They are e-mailing employees directly and asking them to contact Oracle.

>Oracle is being extremely aggressive and mounting what is essentially a phishing campaign against organizations that it sees accessing the extension download page. They are e-mailing employees directly and asking them to contact Oracle. You have a very broad definition of "phishing".

Spamming employees with officious emails and hoping one of them is dumb enough to respond with pertinent information that subverts them or their organization is the textbook definition of phishing. What does it mean to you?

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#180

Post by zamalek »

orf wrote: post #21
Daviey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why do you have a presumption that hyper-v would have better performance?

This may be completely wrong, but as I understand it when you enable hyper-v it sits above your Windows install, and runs your windows as a hyper-v VM. So, rather than running a userland vbox process that has OS overhead (especially around disk IO) it can run much closer to the metal.

If I remember correctly, Hyper-V is not strictly a type 1 hypervisor ("runs your windows as a hyper-v VM") but comes close. The VMs still run pretty close to the metal, but your host OS is mostly free from hypervisor interference.
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