> This is nothing new. From day one open-vm-tools has not been supported > by VMware. What this means is that open-vm-tools doesn't go through > VMware's normal QA and release cycle, and thus if you call up to VMware > support with a problem with open-vm-tools, they won't help you. > > However, VMware is funding the development of open-vm-tools, and taking > some (if not all) of the improvements made in open-vm-tools to help > improve the official VMware Tools offering. In other words, > open-vm-tools is a open source development release, nothing more, > nothing less.
Yes, Sean has it exactly right: open-vm-tools is an open source development project whose code is slurped up into official VMware Tools releases. Because open-vm-tools can be customized and built in so many different ways, and because we can't conceivably test all of those configurations, we can't support the code itself. But we can and do support the official VMware Tools, whose code is effectively the same as the open-vm-tools (albeit less bleeding edge, since it has gone through a product stabilization cycle). In the referenced Novell bug report, John was alluding to the potential confusion that the lack of supportability brings to VMware users. He was arguing that by automating the installation of open-vm-tools on all VMware images, users are now automatically getting a configuration that VMware can't support, and may not know how to "opt-out" of open-vm-tools and "opt-in" to the official VMware Tools. Different users will make different choices if asked to choose between Tools that are supported and Tools that will work out of the box; the installation media shouldn't force one choice. Of course, the ideal situation would be for the installed Tools to both work out of the box AND be supported. We've been remiss about discussing exactly what we're planning, but we're going to release some more information when it's done. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ open-vm-tools-devel mailing list open-vm-tools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/open-vm-tools-devel
