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IIRC Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V server is free also:
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is a stand-alone product that will be available via the Microsoft Download Center free of charge.

Hyper-V is windows based, you need a Windows 2008 license.
ESXi is fully free.

but probably you need the windows license anyways, if you want to run a windows based VM

?
http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server ... o-get.aspx

The product itself is free, or am i being mislead by advertising language?
Any guest OS will always require a license or not, but independent of what host is being used. Or not?

Yes, I believe Hyper-V Server is free. Or we're both being mislead . I guess I'll find out during installation... all I need now is 64 bits hardware .
And for the guest OS's you need the same license as if it was running on physical hardware, regardless of the VM host.
Luckily I don't have to worry about license costs. For all Microsoft licences I need, I always use MSDN keys from work. It's all for training & research purposes, really . If I actually had to pay, I'd probably switch to Linux. Which makes me think... maybe I should make sure my software runs with mono as well... . Especially since it now support C# 3.0 & 4.0 features like lambda-expressions, LINQ, etc.

Hmm... did they change that? All I know is that Hyper-V was an extra install option for 2k8.

Perhaps I should install it again, see what's new.

indeed its a server module. So you still need a 2008 license. But if i can recall you may run two 2008 VM's with the same license.

I have had 2008 Hyper-V Server (not as a server role, without windows GUI, it doesn't have one) running here for a day. Not the R2 version BTW. No license...

On 'regular' Windows 2008 Server editions, like standard or enterprise, Hyper-V is available as a role. For these editions you need a license as normal. Adding the Hyper V role is free, I believe it even becomes available automatically with Windows Update.
The Hyper V server edition is a stripped edition with only the necessary components for hosting VM's. For managing your hosts & VM's, you're supposed to use the Virtual Machine Manager, which is not free. For US $ 505,- you get a license to manage 5 physical hosts. Or brush up on your powershell skills .

By lack of hardware I haven't tried it myself yet. At work I think most ESXi servers have been replaced with Hyper-V. But we are a pure Microsoft shop and have multiple gold partnerships, so I think most licenses are included.