Battered by a crash in its stock price, the replacement of its CEO last year and an aggressive virtualisation market, VMWare has done the only thing it could do: release an open source virtualisation client. Once the pre-eminent name in virtualisation software and with a share price in excess of $120, VMWare is now a $20-a-share player in a market that has more competition than the company seems able to handle.

As OStatic’s SamDean points out, VMWare’s problems come as the result of two things: A new wave of open source virtualisation products; and the free virtualisation tools bundled with operating systems such as Microsoft and Red Hat.

With free, good, alternatives to VMWare, the company is in a bit of a bind. So, it has done what it had to do: compete with its own open source alternative.

The VMware View Open Client allows businesses to host virtualised desktops in the data center and allowing users to access their desktops from any device.

From the announcement:

VMware View enables IT organisations to safely host user desktops in the datacenter, while letting users access their personalised desktop environments from almost any device, at any time – all at a lower cost of ownership than traditional desktop environments. Now, VMware is providing VMware View Open Client for partners, enabling them to use VMware View source code to optimize their products to deliver rich, personalized virtual desktops to users. In addition, partners will be able to use the source code to help accelerate the development and delivery of solutions for enterprises to provision and manage thousands of virtual desktops simply, securely and at substantially lower operating costs.

The VMWare View Open Client software is licensed under the GPL and can be downloaded here.