In February VMware launched an open source version of its View client, released under the LGPL 2.1 version.
virtualization.info already wrote that with this move the company could conquer a large number of thin client providers, which may prefer to adopt and customize View Open Client rather than developing their own connectors.
But it is also possible that VMware may have decided to go open source primarily to accelerate the development of the product and reduce any real or perceived gap with the competition (read Citrix).
In any case, now that View 4.0 is in private beta and finally introduces the much awaited software version of PCoIP, VMware has all the interest to ask the help of the open source community and attract the attention on the new build.
View Open Client 4.0 beta 1 introduces the support for SSL tunneling, two-factor authentication with RSA SecurID and a Command Line Interface (CLI).
Like for the previous release anyway there’s no support for:
- USB redirection
- Multiple desktop sessions
- Multimedia redirection
This client supports View 3.0, 3.1 and the old Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) product, versions 2.0 and 2.1.