A cloud architect has created an open source alternative to VMware’s Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK), which the virtualization giant recently withdrew from public downloads. VMware describes VDDK as “a set of libraries and utilities that enable software developers to create applications that can access and manipulate virtual disks” and “a valuable tool for developers of storage and backup applications.” Users, along with VMware’s rivals, had another use for VDDK: migrating VMs to alternative virtualization platforms. In August, VMware restricted access to VDDK downloads to its partners, meaning VMware customers couldn’t access the tool and some of its rivals’ migration tools became less effective. Cloud architect Andrija Panić decided to do something about it. “Many tools that have nothing in common except VMware use the same small library to read a virtual machine’s disks: virt-v2v and nbdkit, the importers in Forklift/MTV, Proxmox VE and Apache CloudStack, and countless in-house scripts,” he told The Register by email. “When public VDDK downloads ended, all of them became harder to install and run.” “I didn’t think it was fair that people’s ability to move or protect their own data should depend on a download page.” He describes the project as “an independent drop-in for libvixDiskLib. so. 8. 0. 3, the disk library that VMware backup and migration tools load to read virtual disks. It was written from scratch, using only public documentation and black-box testing, and contains no VMware code.”…