VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation • Hacker News Board

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#71

Post by tbrownaw » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:46 PM UTC

nordsieck wrote: post #46

tw04 wrote: post #4

I'm surprised it took this long. I can't really blame them, after 15 years of ignoring the GPL, they probably figured nobody would ever come up with the financial resources to actually go after them. This is going to take years to come to a resolution and millions and millions of dollars in lawyers fees.

I doubt that it'll come to that. There are some really nasty consequences of being found to violate the GPL: 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License... From what I understand, there is no obvious…

Re-do whatever you did to get the license in the first place?

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#72

Post by uniformlyrandom » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:47 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #53

What could a German court do to VMWare? I am wondering if this is a similar situation to where France wanted to sue Google[2] and more recently Fox News[1]. Not trying to be a naysayer, but I wonder if this will accomplish anything? (since the case is in Germany and not the US where VMWare is incorporated) [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/12/paris-lawsuit-f... [2] http://www.themarysue.com/france-sues-go…

> It appears that Paris would not be able to recoup funds from Fox News in the event of any judgment in its favor, based on a 2010 law that prohibits US courts from enforcing any foreign judgement for defamation except in narrow circumstances.

this is dot a defamation case.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#73

Post by tbrownaw » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #57

LWN has a very clear explanation of just how clear-cut this is: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/635290/e501ce0264c182f4/ In particular, this isn't just a question of whether a kernel module is a derived work of the kernel. Apparently VMWare has copied code from the Linux kernel, with GPLed headers on top, and compiled that code directly into some of their code.

It sounded to me like they have two things: one that's proprietary and the other that has modified kernel code in it.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#74

Post by raincom » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #19

stephengillie wrote: post #14

As 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?

Well, the go-to is generally considered Redhat with their RHEV product line. There are a plethora of other options out there, but if you're looking for an open source path with enterprise support they are generally candidate #1. Oracle has an option but... ya. Citrix Xenserver would be the other major player.

VMWare has more than just ESXi: managing ESXi, HA and DRS, vmotion, etc. Open source lacks what VMWare offers to enterprise customers. Not every company can develop tools to manage hypervisors (say, kvm) like Google does.

Openstack is trying to solve this problem; but so far, openstack seems to be more of marketing, less of success stories.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#75

Post by huhtenberg » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

Busybox strikes again.

I worked for a company that was on a receiving end of a similar GPL legal action (though not busybox-based and not from SF Conservancy). I'll tell you what will happen next. VMWare will (a) write a drop-in in-house replacement for busybox (b) they will show that busybox is not an principal part for ESXi and that it can be easily swapped for the in-house replacement. At this point they will release the busybox sources, potentially including the in-house version, but not under GPL. This will hinder the lawsuit, but it will keep dragging on until everyone gets tired of its pointlessness and then it will get quietly dismissed to the mutual satisfaction of both involved parties.

The thing is that it's not that VMWare is evil or unethical. It's just that this GPL thing doesn't even register on their legal radar, so it never percolates down to engineering. Similarly any concerns raised by engineering are never taken seriously by the legal council. It's really as simple as that.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#76

Post by wil421 » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:51 PM UTC

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #72

wil421 wrote: post #53

What could a German court do to VMWare? I am wondering if this is a similar situation to where France wanted to sue Google[2] and more recently Fox News[1]. Not trying to be a naysayer, but I wonder if this will accomplish anything? (since the case is in Germany and not the US where VMWare is incorporated) [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/12/paris-lawsuit-f... [2] http://www.themarysue.com/france-sues-go…

> It appears that Paris would not be able to recoup funds from Fox News in the event of any judgment in its favor, based on a 2010 law that prohibits US courts from enforcing any foreign judgement for defamation except in narrow circumstances. this is dot a defamation case.

So you're saying they would have jurisdiction over a US company in some cases? Just not a defamation one.

From my edit [2]http://www.themarysue.com/france-sues-google-autocomplete/

"In any event, Google is a U.S.-based company, and isn’t compelled to operate under foreign laws. Google’s autocomplete practices are as subject to French law as they are to Japanese law, which is to say they are not subject at all."

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#77

Post by tbrownaw » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:52 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #53

What could a German court do to VMWare? I am wondering if this is a similar situation to where France wanted to sue Google[2] and more recently Fox News[1]. Not trying to be a naysayer, but I wonder if this will accomplish anything? (since the case is in Germany and not the US where VMWare is incorporated) [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/12/paris-lawsuit-f... [2] http://www.themarysue.com/france-sues-go…

They have an office in Germany: http://www.vmware.com/company/office_locations/office_german...

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#78

Post by wil421 » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:54 PM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #77

wil421 wrote: post #53

What could a German court do to VMWare? I am wondering if this is a similar situation to where France wanted to sue Google[2] and more recently Fox News[1]. Not trying to be a naysayer, but I wonder if this will accomplish anything? (since the case is in Germany and not the US where VMWare is incorporated) [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/12/paris-lawsuit-f... [2] http://www.themarysue.com/france-sues-go…

They have an office in Germany: http://www.vmware.com/company/office_locations/office_german...

Thank you, I was trying to figure out if that matters or not.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#79

Post by AceJohnny2 » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:54 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #75

Busybox strikes again. I worked for a company that was on a receiving end of a similar GPL legal action (though not busybox-based and not from SF Conservancy). I'll tell you what will happen next. VMWare will (a) write a drop-in in-house replacement for busybox (b) they will show that busybox is not an principal part for ESXi and that it can be easily swapped for the in-house replacement. At this point they will rele…

A non-GPL Busybox alternative like Toybox?

http://www.landley.net/toybox/about.html

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#80

Post by tbrownaw » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:55 PM UTC

revelation wrote: post #42

spullara wrote: post #31

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…

The GPL has been tested in courts all over the world. VMWare is insane to continue violating it after being informed of the problems and to then refuse cooperation. They'll probably pay up and drop dead once someone mumbles injunction.

VMWare is insane to continue violating it after being informed

Or maybe, they don't agree that they are?