Tim Marsland identified the usually overlooked connection between Open Source Virtualization and Project Indiana in his talk at Australian Sun Tech Days, as residing in the distro builder, the technology that translates the recipe for a particular distribution, along with its functions and capabilities, into a set of interdependent packages able to perform those functions.
As to how an IT organization might utilize this capability, he suggests that, in customizing an off-the-shelf OS, the distro builder is just the ticket. Another use he identifies is the creation of virtual appliances to demonstrate a developer's technologies, which can be run inside a preconfigured OS as a virtual machine, then discarded when it is no longer needed.
An important question Marsland raised in his talk concerned the developer's possible responsibility for, not only any defects in an application, but also defects that might arise in the underlying OS, a question whose answer must involve all the vendors of the components used in delivering every fully-customized, supported software stack. Any suggestions?
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