So, go to the VMware web site, follow the links (mobile VM) and sign up for more information. They'll probably contact you, then you can state your desire to beta-test for them (assuming the N8x0 is a viable platform for a production version...it may well just have been a test bed for demo purposes only. The stated goal is to use this in phones, anyway).

Why does it have to be free?

I believe that's the same guy, yes. Anyway, jyro used to work for VMware.

ok i will pay for it i dont have a problem with that

why not boot something interesting - amiga workbench with hd-games installed

Because Amiga isn't ARM-based. This is virtualisation, not emulation.

Amiga was 68k, I thought ARM was 68k on super steroids?

Not necessarily compatible, but certainly the same family.

rose tinted glasses, i fail!

Well, the N800 is using the standard cell phone parts, so I would consider it a cell phone.

I believe the used the N800 because its cheap, has open hardware, and has that huge screen we all love.

But you know what is the BEST part of all this? If the VM solution could run on a lot of hardware, then any phone could run any operating system. As long as the VM supports it of course.

See above regarding emulation versus virtualization.

I'm not liking this:
"With this transition to open operating systems, protection of trusted services such as digital rights management, authentication, billing, etc. is becoming an increasing concern. VMware MVP allows vendors to isolate these important trusted services from the open operating system and run them in isolated and tamper-proof virtual machines so that even if the open environment is compromised, the trusted services are not impacted."

That said, if they give me Linux on a phone, period, at least that's a step in the right direction, and they'll hopefully eventually realize that DRM is a bad idea.
Personally, if this worked, and worked well, I would pay good money for it. Free is good, but not necessary. Come to think of it, though, I would expect that this would be marketed to handset manufacturers, which means they might well release a free, personal-use edition, even if it is normally commercial. VMWare seems to favour that approach with their other products.

Ahhh, good point. VMWare is offering a better jail than the one Apple uses (which, as far as I understand, is just a chroot). VMWare is suggesting that will be much more difficult to jailbreak a phone that uses their VM technology. I can see what they're saying; if they encrypt the image file that the OS is in, and then make it so only their VM can unlock the image and run the OS, it will be much tougher to hack the OS.