After testing VMware software as a project for work (ESXi, vSphere, workstation, etc) I was interested to know if there are any community plans to look at creating a hypervisor for N900 (and/or other devices) and if not, why not?

I know there was a youtube video from some tech fair showcasing VMware stuff on the N900 (running droid and another OS - cant remember which one now) and also VMware are currently working on MVP (mobile virtualisation platform) so there may be something in the pipeline that will be available, however....

this probably won't be cheap and may not be available to the end user, I can see them just licencing this for commerical uses.

I know there is a lot of talk about Maemo/MeeGo/other OS's running on the N900, but wouldn't it be nice to not have to re-develop a new OS everytime one comes out to work on a specific device......rather lets develop hypervisors for each device, then we can run what we want

Also I know there is talk of the drivers/other source code being closed which are needed to get things working (abill_uk's thread springs to mind) but would we need the actual drivers/middleware closed stuff, to be fully open source to create a hypervisor??

My knowledge is limited when it comes to the middleware/drivers/kernel sort of areas that are obvisously involved with creating/modifing OS's to run on different devices....

.....but maybe an ARM based hypervisor (plus middleware/drivers for a specific device) may skirt the whole problem entirely and we could run what ever OS's we wanted as VM's.

I know this topic has been touched on before as well as shot down (to soon I think), but Xen are currently working on an ARM based hypervisor so it's not a completely stupid idea

.....plus it might help stop the Maemo Vs MeeGo bashing, that everyone seems keen on at the moment!