Most of VMware virtualization code was stolen from kvm and they never were punished. Our laws are a joke, our courts are largely illegitimate and so to is our government.
VMwware sure as hell did not invent the hypervisor, and we were damn careful not to ever claim that. The early unique IP was how to enable a hypervisor to use dynamic translation where required to work around non-virtualizable x86 instructions, we also did well with how to package a hypervisor to run on a host/share host devices etc. Over time that early differentiation went away as we helped encourage CPU vendors to include better hardware virtualization support. And the other big thing we had was just a market focus/desire to deliver value/delight nerdy users like ourselves.
Who is the granddaddy of hypervisors? It sure ain't KVM, and it sure ain't VMware. That would be IBM. They had decades of doing hypervisors on the mainframe when we were getting started as a tiny startup. They sure know a lot about hypervisors and had a x86 hypervisor research project in Watson labs. We were humbled when IBM fellow Rich Oehler came to us wanting to partner because he saw how far ahead we were. That was years before KVM even got started. The IBM collaboration, lead to years of great work with IBM, who helped VMwware get going with ESX Server. Although the focus of VMware since founding was always to end up focusing on the data center/server market we could not have done that so well and so fast without IBM and sales and GTM cooperation.
Now good on KVM and others for pushing open hypervisor technology, and any company in this space who actually cares about their users and customers. I hope KVM helps pound VMware/Broadcom into the dirt.
Edit: typos