Red Hat has open sourced a virtual desktop protocol, called the Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment (SPICE), in the hope of fostering its wider adoption. This protocol is comparable to Windows RDP or Citrix ICA.

SPICE can be used to deploy virtual desktops from a server out to remote computers, such as desktop PCs and thin-client devices.

By making SPICE open source, Red Hat hopes other vendors will use it for their own virtual desktop offerings.
Last year Red Hat acquired SPICE when it purchased Qumranet. Qumranet used SPICE for its own commercial desktop-virtualization product, called SolidIce.

It resembles other rendering protocols used for remote desktop management and deployment, such as Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) or Citrix's Independent Computing Architecture (ICA). SPICE has advantages over those other protocols, because it can dynamically customize desktop instances to fit specific operating environments.

Red Hat placed most of the SPICE code under the GNU General Public License version 2, though parts are also licensed under Lesser GPL (LGPL) and BSD-styled licenses.

A special Web site and a mailing list has been setup to try to foster community involvement. Head over here for more info.