I am not really up to date on this case. Why is Christian sueing for just the copyright infringement of his contributions? It sounds like this 'fading' concept might really put a stop to this whole trial. Wouldn't it be possible for Christian to represent more Linux developers so their collective work sits comfortably above 1% of Linux?
Report from the VMware GPL court hearing
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Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing
#22It is perhaps unsurprising that the American lawyer is the same one who represented Oracle in the first round of the Oracle v. Google litigation.
Yes, it's not very surprising that lawyers versed in copyright and open source get a lot of work in that area.
Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing
#23Some quotes that I feel shows VMware's attitude towards the software freedom community: [...] the VMware defense in claiming that overall, they could only find very few functions that could be attributed to Christoph, and that this may altogether be only 1% of the Linux code they use in VMware ESXi. At times their lawyers made statements like linux is this small yellow box in the left bottom corner (of our diagram).…
What did you expect them to say? Linux is a huge part of what we do? Here's how I see it. Vmkernel has a driver API. It's documented, versioned, comes with a ddk and has drivers written directly to it. As we all know, Linux basically has driver apis. They are not as explicit as the vmkernel driver apis; they are not versioned and deliberately unstable - but if you've written a line of kernel code you know they are th…
>Can I do the reverse? Implement a GPL licensed wrapper that converts the Linux driver API to one provided by a binary blob (ie. what vmklinux does talking to vmkernel) and thus use the drivers?
NDISwrapper?
Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can I do the reverse? Implement a GPL licensed wrapper that converts the Linux driver API to one provided by a binary blob (ie. what vmklinux does talking to vmkernel) and thus use the drivers? The GPL wrapper method has long been considered to be a subterfuge that GPL lawyers think judges would be able to see through. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLWrapper As to the rest of your questions, this is ho…
> The GPL wrapper method has long been considered to be a subterfuge that GPL lawyers think judges would be able to see through. However, the GPL lawyers don't want to press the point too hard as they could easily lose a lot of hardware that would quickly render Linux useless. If nVidia, for example, got scorched by the GPL and started releasing binary-only drivers only for FreeBSD, Linux would start losing a lot of…
Why is it so important to protect proprietary software companies that infringe on other's copyright?
Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing
#25This is just an excellent summary of events so far, and the court proceedings. I'm looking forward to more analysis as the case proceeds. It's interesting to come at it from a long-time Linux user perspective -- it seems incontrovertible that GPL is being violated to me -- so I'm most curious how this winds its way through the courts.
Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
What did you expect them to say? Linux is a huge part of what we do? Here's how I see it. Vmkernel has a driver API. It's documented, versioned, comes with a ddk and has drivers written directly to it. As we all know, Linux basically has driver apis. They are not as explicit as the vmkernel driver apis; they are not versioned and deliberately unstable - but if you've written a line of kernel code you know they are th…
You missed a pretty big part here. OpenZFS and Nvidia are modules of the kernel, they use the exposed API. OpenZFS is fully open source, with an incompatible license. Nivida's graphic driver has a GPLed portion that it's binary blob loads into. OpenZFS is may be only considered derivative, because when it compiles, it has to include the kernel header files, because that is how you compile C code. No part's of its cod…
glibc is LGPL, not GPL like the kernel.
Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The GPL wrapper method has long been considered to be a subterfuge that GPL lawyers think judges would be able to see through. However, the GPL lawyers don't want to press the point too hard as they could easily lose a lot of hardware that would quickly render Linux useless. If nVidia, for example, got scorched by the GPL and started releasing binary-only drivers only for FreeBSD, Linux would start losing a lot of…
Why is it so important to protect proprietary software companies that infringe on other's copyright?
Leaving aside the fact that this isn't really settled legal theory...
Linux would be hurt more by nVidia's absence than nVidia would be hurt by Linux's absence.
Linux could disappear tomorrow, and there are plenty of free Unix-like alternatives that easily fill the void.
If nVidia disappeared tomorrow, there are lots of Linux contracts that would simply stop (and most likely switch to Windows).
Now, you can argue ideologically, but part of the reason why Linux is popular stems from the fact that Linus was more pragmatic about licensing rather than RMS' dogmatism.
If you want to see what a world with a strictly enforced GPL without modules looks like, look at the device support for OpenBSD. A lot of Linux folks would be very upset being limited to that set of peripherals.
Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The GPL wrapper method has long been considered to be a subterfuge that GPL lawyers think judges would be able to see through. However, the GPL lawyers don't want to press the point too hard as they could easily lose a lot of hardware that would quickly render Linux useless. If nVidia, for example, got scorched by the GPL and started releasing binary-only drivers only for FreeBSD, Linux would start losing a lot of…
Why is it so important to protect proprietary software companies that infringe on other's copyright?
I think his point is that if the nvidia company felt threatened by Linux, then they would immediately stop producing for Linux. In which case the Linux ecosystem would shrink, and the platform would become less useful.
Would this actually happen? Would it effect Linuxes popularity? That's harder to predict.
Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing
#29I am not really up to date on this case. Why is Christian sueing for just the copyright infringement of his contributions? It sounds like this 'fading' concept might really put a stop to this whole trial. Wouldn't it be possible for Christian to represent more Linux developers so their collective work sits comfortably above 1% of Linux?
His lawyer should probably make it a class action - represent the "Linux Kernel Developers" class. That probably cover 100% of the code.
Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can I do the reverse? Implement a GPL licensed wrapper that converts the Linux driver API to one provided by a binary blob (ie. what vmklinux does talking to vmkernel) and thus use the drivers? The GPL wrapper method has long been considered to be a subterfuge that GPL lawyers think judges would be able to see through. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLWrapper As to the rest of your questions, this is ho…
If "GPL lawyers" think that, where are the enforcement actions? When lawyers say they believe things about the law but aren't, it -- as the SF conservancy itself pointed out in their statement on the Canonical ZFS issue -- often represents what their clients have an interest in people believing about the law more than anything else.
> If "GPL lawyers" think that, where are the enforcement actions?
Nobody has actually tried to legally challenge the GPL via a GPL wrapper, so there's nothing to enforce yet. It seems like there's widespread consensus that a GPL wrapper wouldn't work. Indeed, if it did work, it would make copyleft utterly pointless. Just write a simple wrapper around any GPL library you want and no more copyleft.
The situation with nvidia and VMWare is not about GPL wrappers.