From the
‘
Open Source Takes Time
‘
files:
A year after acquiring the SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment) hosted virtual desktop protocol from Qumranet, Red Hat is now open sourcing it.
Red Hat bought Qumranet in 2008 for $107 million as a way to boost its virtualization business, now based on KVM , which was initially developed by Qumranet.
I know that Red Hat has always said that they try and make any tech they acquire open source (which they have in practice) and I know it often takes time.
Whey SPICE is particularly interesting and important is the fact that it’s a key part of a core Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops which is now in beta. Red Hat rolled out a big server virtualization released last month based on Qumranet tech as well. The problem with the server release is it required Windows (which I personally found quite jarring).