Virtualization Daily

From Network World Virtual appliance make OS … irrelevant?

Virtual appliances give vendors the ability to pre-tune and configure the operating system with the minimal set of components needed to run the application. The end result: a more secure, smaller and better tuned operating system and an application installation experience that is as smooth as possible.

If anything, the only visible part of the operating system is the licensing - someone has to pay for the operating system license. This will undoubtedly boost the use of open source operating systems, which have more flexible licensing and can be licensed and supported by the vendor of the application, rather than by the end user.

Licensing is a huge problem for applications that are based on commercial software. It’s not just the OS: databases, libraries and any other dependancies that the application requires also need to be licensed in a manner that allows redistribution. With Open Source software this is fairly straight forward although there are some interesting questions that may still emerge.