VirtualBox extension licensing concerns and possible VB Alternative?

[Elise Tanner]

Hello All,

The IT department at my institution has flagged my use of the VirtualBox extension as a possible licensing issue. I use the free version solely to run BitCurator. I realize it's not a huge expense to purchase a license in this case, but I am curious if anybody else has had this issue and, if so, how was it handled? 

Here is the VB extension license information for reference.

It's definitely unclear to me if our use of the VB extension with BitCurator would fall under educational use? (I work at a state-funded University.)

Are there any recommended alternatives to VirtualBox for use with BitCurator? Or would any virtualization software suffice?

Thanks!

Best,

Elise

--

Elise Tanner | Director of Digital Projects and Initiatives
Center for Arkansas History and Culture
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
501-320-5770 | emta...@ualr.edu | ualr.edu/cahc
facebook.com/ualrcahc | twitter.com/ualrcahc

[jfca...@gmail.com]

Re-upping this old message to say a word of caution as we were recently pinged by Oracle for using VirtualBox extension pack without an enterprise license. Perhaps I should have been paying more attention to the fine print!

We're going the route of getting a license. But for anyone coming across this thread in the future or if your institution finds the license cost prohibitive, maybe it would not be in violation to just use VirtualBox to convert to Hyper-V and run the VM in Hyper-V? I'm not sure as VirtualBox extension pack seems required for this. Maybe there's some other way around using VirtualBox?

There's always the dedicated install of BitCurator too, if you're able.

Virtually yours,

Joe