> Since it was told to me in private conversation I'm not going to name
drop, but two Apple vice presidents said that Apple is completely
fine with virtualization of Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server as long as it
is on Apple hardware (and is properly licensed).
I'm not entirely sure that "Two Apple VPs told some guy that virtualization
was OK by them" is an ironclad defense in court...
I also asked Apple Legal and Apple's copyright folks multiple times
whether the clause in the license agreement prohibited
virtualization. No answer, of course.
...especially when Apple Legal can't be persuaded to say anything similar.
Apple can resolve this inconsistency in five minutes if they choose to.
Neither Parallels nor EMC/VMWare has that power.
Agree. I'm starting to put services into our Red Hat Enterprise Linux
VM environments instead of Mac OS X Server, specifically because of
numerous advantages in our environment, not the least of which is
cost, for VMs.
I'm starting to look at replacing Xserves with *NIX/Windows servers as well,
for similar reasons.
The REALLY boggling thing to me is that Apple almost certainly makes MORE
profit off of a $999 copy of Mac OS X Server than off a $2999 Xserve, so if
they can sell more copies of server for virtualization use that's nothing
but a win for them. But they don't see it that way.
--
Dave Pooser, ACSA
Manager of Information Services
Alford Media http://www.alfordmedia.com
