Is there something we can do about Virtualbox?
I love virtualbox. It's one of the best learning tools that I've had in my arsenal for many, many years. It pains me that such a small and seemingly inconsequential part of virtualbox, OpenWatcom, violates the FSDG. Is there a project underway to remove it? I don't want to install it on my operating system until something or someone makes things right. There has to be a good way to go about doing this that makes all parties happy
I am a translator!
You can use an alternative such as KVM, QEMU or Xen. If you want a GUI, you can try virt-manager or AQEMU. You can find guides here:
https://subhadipsblog.wordpress.com/2016/04/02/installing-qemu-with-kvm-and-virt-manager/
https://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201210/page11.html
99.999% of virtualbox is free software, there has to be a way! I'm not a programmer, but I'll keep rooting from the sidelines
Just like the ZFS for TrueOS, Oracle Linux, Illumos, Solaris systems under CDDL that's violated against GPL, which Oracle is hence needed to make an OSE channel (open source edition) for VirtualBox to be met under the GPL requirements. VirtualBox has been done to do this but OpenZFS still inherits CDDL from the stock ZFS, that can be not yet available to us.
According to GNU.org CDDL "is a free software license":
http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:CDDLv1.0
I don't understand why that would be a show stopper for VirtualBox.
CDDL is FSF approved but GPL incompatible, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#CDDL,
It has a weak per-file copyleft (like version 1 of the MPL) which makes it incompatible with our GPL. This means modules covered by the GPL and ones covered by the CDDL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the CDDL for this reason.
Also unfortunate in the CDDL is its use of the term “intellectual property”.
Also see here, https://www.fsf.org/licensing/zfs-and-linux.
You would have to modify the code of the code of the BIOS used by VirtualBox so that it can be compiled with GCC or Clang (or any other free software compiler, unlike Open Watcom).
"VirtualBox OSE Guest Additions" are non-free too: http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/multiverse/v/virtualbox-guest-additions-iso/virtualbox-guest-additions-iso_5.2.11-122181-1/copyright