Re: [Xen-users] Anything come close to esx for xen?

[Thomas Goirand <thomas@xxxxxxxxxx>]

lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Problem is, it's not only the techs using these things.

That is my point! I do think that only techs should use it DIRECTLY and
that other projects should give an interface to it.

In the UNIX "spirit", each individual program is specialized in an as
much limited role as possible, but it should do it well. In that way,
Xen is doing very well.

> Not so much pretty gui but web tools are usually pretty easy compared to 
> command line for non techs.

There are MANY available, as others pointed out.

> Again, I'm not criticizing, I was wishing :)

But even a WISH is not relevant, as I don't think this is the ROLE of
Xen to have a GUI. This HAS to be in a separated project, as there are
many types of applications for it, which would require a totally
different GUI.

For example, the tools we wrote at GPLHost (dtc-xen and dtc), that are
integrated in Debian, are meant ONLY for doing commercial VPS hosting.
It's doing ok for this purpose, or even to share a Xen server among few
domU users with privilege separations, but it's really not adapted for
other usages. If you want to use a tool to just do the administration of
a Xen server for your own use, then maybe it's best to use a GTK
interface rather than a website. You wont as well need the rights
delegations with login and password, etc.

The fact that the open source Xen does NOT include a GUI is to me a very
good thing, so there is nothing authoritative, and it leaves the door
open to many projects. Maybe it's just a shame that there is not enough
integration efforts, and not enough of these projects, but nothing more.

> My point is simply that I very much want clear lines between commercial
> and non commercial.

I do as well, and I as well, am not happy with Citrix behavior. SUN
learned it the bad way with OpenOffice (remember the StarOffice
licensing?), maybe Citrix will as well, if they listen to all the critics.

> My wife even started a web site to help xen users to find xen
> related goodies.

URL?

> It took minutes to install ESX and it's ready to use. I would prefer
> using xen but as it's not a turn-key thing right now, I'll end up using ESX 
> for some things, xen for others, which is what I expected anyhow.
>  
>>  As I pointed out earlier, it's just not right to say Xen == Citrix. Just
>>  as it's not right either to say Linux == Linus Torvalds. Xen is owned by
>>  all the contributors. There is NOTHING Citrix can do to change this,
>>  they can't take away the license, it's just not legal.
> 
> Never said anything along those lines and if I did, it must be in how I typed 
> it because I agree.

Well, I just wanted to highlight that if you want to ignore Citrix, this
IS possible, as Xen is in open source...

> As for why I feel it can bite me, as I said, over the years, I've
> seen countless projects start out as 'free', open source, and
> eventually once they built up momentum, turn into fully commercial
> products. That's fine in some ways, but better would be companies
> that at least tell you that they will always have an open source
> version with pretty much all features over limited features.

They can't take away what has been released in open source. Fork is the
way to go.

> Take
> a look at RedHat, SugarCRM, Asterisk, Trixbox, countless others
> like these guys, that's what I'm talking about.

There are alternatives for all of them. There's CentOS instead of RedHat
(I still thing the RPM system is *bad* and that everyone should use
*plain* Debian (and not it's ugly derivative Ubuntu)), Callweaver
instead of Asterisk (I highly recommend this one). The issue here is
that no one is aware of it, when in fact everybody should be switching
to the fork, to get rid of the evil. This can be changed spreading the
information, writing to each others like I'm doing right now.

http://www.callweaver.org/blog

The issue with Digium is different by the way. The issue is that they
are not accepting patches the way they should (like the clock issue or
something that binds to using Digium hardware...). I have never heard
about such thing with Xen, and if it happens one day, you can be sure it
will be forked very soon, as there are too many people and companies
involved.

As for Trixbox, it's "just" asterisk + freepbx + other goodies (I hope
I'm not mistaking here), and it's so obvious this is insulting open
source developers of the former projects. It's so harmful that they are
still using the non-free jpgraph in FreePBX, otherwise it would already
be in Debian and other distros...

> They absolutely
> have commercial sides to them but they have the fully open,
> unlimited versions as well.
> 
> Hope the misunderstanding is no longer there.

Me too, as it seems you also didn't get what I meant! :)

Thomas


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