Yes! Bochs is released under the GNU LGPL.
Phonetically the same as the English word "box". It's just a play on the word "box", since techies like to call their machines a "Linux box", "Windows box", ... Bochs emulates a box inside a box.
Kevin Lawton is the primary author of Bochs. There have been bug fixes, enhancements, and code contributions from some few hundred people, so it is not possible to list them all. Later, Kevin had been working on a PC virtualization project called plex86. In Fall 2002, he made contributed some major CPU speedups and helped with integration and debugging of the x86-64 emulation code.
With Kevin's help, in April 2001, the members of the bochs-developers mailing list set up a new official Bochs site hosted by Source Forge. The admins on this project are Greg Alexander, Don Becker, Christophe Bothamy, Bryce Denney, Volker Ruppert and Stanislav Shwartsman.
Because Bochs emulates every x86 instruction and all the devices in a PC system, it does not reach high emulation speeds. Users who have an x86 processor and want the highest emulation speeds may want to consider PC virtualization software such as Vmware or VirtualBox (free software). Another related project is QEMU.
No. It uses a disk image file, which is simply a large file, like any other file, on your platform's disk.
Think about this. If you had two different PC's, they would require different hardware drivers. So you may not be able to safely move a disk drive with WinXP on it, from one to the other. Bochs is no different. It emulates a certain set of hardware devices, and requires each OS be configured for those devices.
Yes. For instructions on joining, refer to Section 7.2.
Yes. You will usually find Bochs developers and users on IRC at irc.freenode.net:6667, channel #bochs.
Yes! Look for "Screen Shots" on bochs.sourceforge.net or on other Bochs sites.
Yes, the CD-ROM emulation and accessing ISO files is always available. Reading from host CD-ROM media is supported in Linux, Windows, and most BSDs. The CD-ROM drivers for Bochs allow the guest operating system to access the host operating system's CD-ROM data directly.
Yes, Bochs emulates a Sound Blaster 16 card (ISA, no plug&play) or an ES1370 PCI. Output to the host sound system is implemented for some platforms. See Section 1.7 for details.
Yes. Bochs emulates an NE2000 compatible network card (ISA / PCI) or an Intel(R) 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet adapter (PCI). Using the host's network capabilities is not supported on all platforms. See Section 1.7 for details.
Well, lot's of different OS's run inside of Bochs, so thousands. I'm assuming you are asking about Windows programs. To give you a few, the following ones from the Winstone'98 tests worked: Access 97, CorelDRAW! 7, Excel 97, Lotus 1-2-3 97, Word 97, PowerPoint 97, Quattro Pro 7, WordPerfect 7.
Also, I've compiled an entire OS kernel inside Bochs before. Not to mention, running DOOM, though at then-pathetic speeds.
You should read Chapter 4 first. Next, you can check Chapter 10 if there specific instructions on how to install your (guest) OS inside of Bochs.
Bochs has now minimal support for the Android platform using a special version of the SDL library. There are some external projects that use the offical sources with some modifications. They also offer a gui for easy Bochs configuration. Other mobile platforms are not officially supported yet.