Open Source Weblog

... Adding to Sun’s acquisition on January 16 of MySQL, the open source database player, Sun said this latest move confirms it is the “largest commercial open source contributor.”

Sun is buying innotek with stock, and the terms of the deal are undisclosed.

"VirtualBox provides Sun with the perfect complement to our recently announced Sun xVM Server product," said Rich Green, executive vice president, Sun Software. “Where Sun xVM Server is designed to enable dynamic IT at the heart of the datacenter, VirtualBox is ideal for any laptop or desktop environment and will align perfectly with Sun’s other developer focused assets such as GlassFish, OpenSolaris, OpenJDK and soon MySQL as well as a wide range of community open source projects, enabling developers to quickly develop, test and deploy the next generation of applications."

Sun said there have been over four million downloads of the free, open source VirtualBox software since January 2007. It said as part of Sun’s xVM portfolio, VirtualBox will have the support of Sun’s global development community, field resources and partners to make VirtualBox even more compelling.

VirtualBox basically enables desktop or laptop PCs running the Windows, Linux, Mac or Solaris operating systems to run multiple, different operating systems side-by-side, switching between them with a mouse-click. This enables software developers to more easily build multi-tier or cross-platform applications, or power-users to take advantage of applications that may not be available for their base operating system of choice, Sun said.

VirtualBox can be downloaded at virtualbox.org or openxvm.org. The software will run on Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris operating systems, while supported guest operating systems include all versions of Windows from 3.1 to Vista, Linux 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, Solaris x86, OS/2, Netware and DOS.

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed during the third quarter of Sun's 2008 fiscal year.

Innotek is based in Stuttgart, Germany with offices in Dresden, Berlin and the Russian Federation.