Any litigation of the GPL is more than likely more dangerous for the GPL than it is for the companies. A relaxing of the understood requirements of using and distributing GPL code could cause an avalanche of fall out from formerly protected code becoming less protected. If I was this organization I would only risk a lawsuit of something that would have profound positive consequences for open source. VMware's risk is relatively small vs the risk that the GPL's viral component is weakened.
VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
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Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#32As a VMWare customer, this makes me consider their ethics. If they're unethical, shouldn't we look into switching away from their product? I'm not aware of many competitors in their market space - Hyper-V certainly, but that's less of an option for some. Short of rearchitecting our service as a series of containers, what action can conscientious corporate leaders take?
Oracle's Virtualbox? Oh, you said ethics...nevermind.
Abstracting from ethics, Virtualbox is probably not a suitable replacement for ESXi. Oracle VM Server might be.
But then, you could use Xen directly.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#33It's a german lawyer suing in a german court for a german client. How can I donate in EUR without the money going through USD?
Edit: "[The USD] is our currency, but it's your problem.", John Bowden Connally, Jr.
Obviously here are people who like it that way.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not fully up-to-date on this case, but there is a bit of wiggle room on what counts as a derivative work, even in kernelspace. My favorite example is OpenAFS. Development of the AFS kernel module started in 1983, so the code is a decade older than Linux itself. So it's hard to argue that openafs.ko is a derivative work of Linux, and since it continues to run on several kernels other than Linux (Darwin, Solaris, N…
The issue is that there's linking, not merely calling from. As for "what came first"- the license (which is a legal contract) specifies what is and isn't allowed. The LGPL would work in the way you are saying that VMWare might like it to work- where linking isn't the same as deriving. The fact that these two licenses exist demonstrates that distinction clearly. The issue will be whether or not a judge understands the…
"Linking" and "calling" are also technical concepts, not legal. The GPL and LGPL claim a distinction, but that claim may not have teeth in all cases (as I understand it as a non-lawyer who has worked with FOSS for more than half my existence).
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#35Any litigation of the GPL is more than likely more dangerous for the GPL than it is for the companies. A relaxing of the understood requirements of using and distributing GPL code could cause an avalanche of fall out from formerly protected code becoming less protected. If I was this organization I would only risk a lawsuit of something that would have profound positive consequences for open source. VMware's risk is…
There have been several rulings in germany in favor of the GPL and its enforceability[1][2][3] (pages in german), so these aren't exactly untested waters.
[1] http://www.ifross.org/sites/default/files/130618%20Urteil%20... [2] http://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/Urteil/2767/LG_Frankfurt_6.Zi... [3] http://www.internetrecht-rostock.de/urheberrecht23-gpl-lg-mu...
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#36Any litigation of the GPL is more than likely more dangerous for the GPL than it is for the companies. A relaxing of the understood requirements of using and distributing GPL code could cause an avalanche of fall out from formerly protected code becoming less protected. If I was this organization I would only risk a lawsuit of something that would have profound positive consequences for open source. VMware's risk is…
There is strong precedent in German courts for enforcing GPL violations. Probably stronger than in any other country's legal system. The Software Freedom Conservancy is probably the organization least likely to screw up the decision to enforce the GPL through the courts.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#37If I'm not mistaken this is the first instance of a kernel developer participating in a GPL lawsuit. That could bring a whole new era of GPL lawsuits.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#38As a VMWare customer, this makes me consider their ethics. If they're unethical, shouldn't we look into switching away from their product? I'm not aware of many competitors in their market space - Hyper-V certainly, but that's less of an option for some. Short of rearchitecting our service as a series of containers, what action can conscientious corporate leaders take?
Hyper-V is great, also System Center Virtual Machine manager kicks the pants out of VCloud Director and friends.
If you prefer a more hands on approach just plain Xen or KVM is a great option too. As for orchestration in that space have a look at running Openstack or Xen Orchestra etc.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#39Any litigation of the GPL is more than likely more dangerous for the GPL than it is for the companies. A relaxing of the understood requirements of using and distributing GPL code could cause an avalanche of fall out from formerly protected code becoming less protected. If I was this organization I would only risk a lawsuit of something that would have profound positive consequences for open source. VMware's risk is…
If the GPL isn't strong enough to hold up in court, it's not a very good license and could use some modification. It's going to need to be challenged some time, or else it will stop being taken seriously. If companies think they can trample on the GPL and get away with it, the GPL is destroyed. If someone challenges a company and the GPL is weakened, it can be made stronger.
This can only have a positive outcome. The alternative is the GPL ceases to exist.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#40So this could be really interesting from a precedent standpoint because it could help clarify the legality of the GPL in various contexts in the court. Whatever you think about the GPL (and I'm for open source and open licenses but I do have issues with GPL v3, but that's just me), this has been necessary, I believe, in order for GPL and OSS projects to move forward.
I'm not sure it will be that groundbreaking; this seems to be yet another busybox violation litigated in Germany, of which we have had several already.
You missed the next paragraph, in which it says that as they looked further into it, they discovered Linux kernel violations as well.
LWN has some more detailed coverage, describing the proprietary vmkernel component that gets loaded into the kernel as a kernel module, and the specific files from the kernel that are included in this: http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/635290/d7304b50a2ef15b0/
This is much deeper than simply a binary kernel module that uses the exported interfaces; it also appears to copy wholesale large parts of kernel internals, not just access the kernel via defined interfaces.