Bounty and timeline on vmware 5.x on FreeBSD 6.x

[John Kozubik]

I have been running FreeBSD as my primary workstation OS for 8 years now.

Vmware workstation is an absolute requirement for my work, and thus I have
been limping along on an old copy of Vmware Workstation 3.x for Linux run
in binary compat mode on FreeBSD 4.x. [1]

For a variety of reasons, this is no longer sustainable.  Not only do I
need to move to FreeBSD 6.x, but I need to upgrade to Vmware 5.x.

Running another host OS is not an option - I suspect you will sympathize.

Is there anyone out there that has the time, expertise and background to
implement Vmware workstation 5.x on FreeBSD 6.x, in as good (or better) a
fashion as 3.x on FreeBSD 4.x was circa 2001-2002 ?

Further, would you be interested in maintaining such an implementation
into the future so that Vmware on FreeBSD is no longer a "pet project",
but rather a regularly tested and updated piece of the ports tree ? [2][3]

I am willing to immediately pay an initial and ongoing bounty to get work
started, and am willing to organize some kind of ongoing bounty effort to
get this back on the right track and kept there.


John Kozubik - john at kozubik.com - http://www.kozubik.com



[1] Yes, I do realize that http://www.break.net/orlando/freebsd.html
describes a set of hacks to get Vmware 4.x running on recent FreeBSD
releases.

[2] That is, creating and maintaining a vmware5 port (and later, vmware6)
and polishing it such that the vmware3 port is no longer required.

[3] Eventually supporting the proposed vmware 3d accel, etc.