In computing, SPICE (the Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) is a remote-display system built for virtual environments which allows users to view a computing "desktop" environment - not only on its computer-server machine, but also from anywhere on the Internet and using a wide variety of machine architectures. Qumranet originally developed SPICE as a closed source codebase in 2007. Red Hat, Inc acquired Qumranet in 2008, and in December 2009 decided to release the code under an open-source license and treat the protocol as an open standard.