Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 10:08:31 -0700 From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net> To: "Sam Fourman Jr." <sfourman@gmail.com> Cc: emulation@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hope for USB support? Message-ID: <20101011170831.B03301CC3E@ptavv.es.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 11 Oct 2010 11:55:00 CDT." <AANLkTinOx9X6We5Vo0FbXR8NycuisNSDrCuLjCn97hD1@mail.gmail.com>
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> Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 11:55:00 -0500 > From: "Sam Fourman Jr." <sfourman@gmail.com> > > On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 11:29 AM, Kevin Oberman <oberman@es.net> wrote: > > I know that it is a long shot, especially with Oracle at the helm VB on > > the corporate side, but USB support for VirtualBox is the one piece I am > > missing that forces me to keep a bootable Windows system around. > > > > Is there any hope of seeing USB on VB with FreeBSD as the host and > > Windows as the guest OS? > > I could use this as well, and I know of at least 2 others. > > I guess a good starting point would be to ask, what is the scope of > work that needs to be done to add USB support to Virtual box in > FreeBSD I probably should explain that this is both a legal and technical issue. VB USB support contains third-party proprietary code. This is the reason that USB support is only available on the binary version of VB. It is clearly listed as part of Closed-source distributions. I was told some time ago that Sun was attempting to get licensing for this code to allow it to be open-sourced, but it was obviously not a trivial hurdle for them and I suspect Oracle has a bit less committent to open-source. The bottom line is that this is NOT a trivial issue in any way and will be difficult to get unless those who have access to the proprietary code can provide the FreeBSD bits and distribute a CSE distribution for FreeBSD. -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634 Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4 EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751
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