Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] qcow3 - arbitrary metadata

[Paul Brook <paul@codesourcery.com>]

> Ease of use primarily.  Take the case of a VM appliance.  I would build a
> VM appliance and in the metadata I would put:
> 1. My company's logo (which would show up as the icon on the file in any
> file browser)
> 2. All the correct config for how to make the VM implementation start this
> image
> 3. A first-run startup message with instructions
> 4. A click-through license agreement
>
> The user would download and double-click a single file and the VM would
> start up, ask me to agree to a license, provide me the instructions on how
> to begin and just start running.

This is already broken because you're assuming a suitable version of qemu is 
preinstalled on the user's machine.  Once you have to install qemu, you can 
just as easily install a frontend to provide whatever user interface you 
want.

All modern filesystems have things called "directories" or "folders" than be 
be used to group sets of related files.

Paul