VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation • Hacker News Board

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#91

Post by huhtenberg » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:06 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #81

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…

Or you know, they can stop being jerks and release sources for the code they derived from the GPLed one. > It's just that this GPL thing doesn't even register on their legal radar It should register. > Similarly any concerns raised by engineering are never taken seriously by the legal council. Not in any serious company to my experience. Being so lax on legal matters for such company shows very low level of their man…

> Being so lax on legal matters for such company shows very low level of their management's professionalism.

Actually, no, it doesn't.

It merely means that the management views GPL violations as a low-probability calculated risk. As in "we know that we can be in compliance, but we won't be wasting any resources on it until it's justified". It has nothing to do with the professionalism.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#92

Post by geofft » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #73

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.

Interesting. My reading is that there are two components. The first is the Linux bootstrap, which they are entirely in compliance for. The second is vmkernel, which includes some GPL code whose source they're releasing, but vmkernel as a whole is not GPL; this is almost certainly out of compliance (but also easily fixable), unless they're doing something to isolate "vmkdrivers" from the rest of vmkernel.

(Can I legally port, say, the GPLv2 ext4 filesystem driver from Linux to a non-GPL OS like OS X? Can Apple pick up that port, and distribute ext4.kext and its source in OS X, without putting the entire xnu kernel under GPLv2?)

The harder and fuzzier part is that the ESX boot process works by asking Linux to "load" vmkernel, using the vmklinux helper module. If this is in the sense of loading a kernel module, it's (mostly) clearly wrong. If this is in the sense of loading a userspace app (as if vmklinux was a binfmt module, and vmkernel was a non-ELF executable), then this is (mostly) clearly okay. But it's doing neither of those. It's loading vmkernel above Linux, making the Linux process the first world, analogous to a Xen domU. So this isn't userspace, but it's also arguably a new address space. Neither of which are legal concepts per se, so it's hard to tell where this lies.

This fuzzy part is neither the first component (Linux / "vmnix" / the bootstrap) nor the second (vmkernel), but the way in which they interact and are designed around each other. This itself might be an infringement, even if the first is not infringing, and the second is fixed.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#93

Post by jcoffland » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #91

shmerl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know, they can stop being jerks and release sources for the code they derived from the GPLed one. > It's just that this GPL thing doesn't even register on their legal radar It should register. > Similarly any concerns raised by engineering are never taken seriously by the legal council. Not in any serious company to my experience. Being so lax on legal matters for such company shows very low level of their man…

> Being so lax on legal matters for such company shows very low level of their management's professionalism. Actually, no, it doesn't. It merely means that the management views GPL violations as a low-probability calculated risk. As in "we know that we can be in compliance, but we won't be wasting any resources on it until it's justified". It has nothing to do with the professionalism.

In a world where lying and cheating when it's convienient is considered professional, you're right.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#94

Post by rodgerd » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

raincom wrote: post #74

tw04 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> managing ESXi, HA and DRS, vmotion, etc.

These are all part of oVirt/RHEV.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#95

Post by rodgerd » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:17 PM UTC

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?

> I'm not aware of many competitors in their market space

Grab the oVirt upstream and decide which of the commercially-supported downstreams you want.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#96

Post by kion » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:19 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #92

tbrownaw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Interesting. My reading is that there are two components. The first is the Linux bootstrap, which they are entirely in compliance for. The second is vmkernel, which includes some GPL code whose source they're releasing, but vmkernel as a whole is not GPL; this is almost certainly out of compliance (but also easily fixable), unless they're doing something to isolate "vmkdrivers" from the rest of vmkernel. (Can I legal…

vmnix aka Service Console aka Console OS aka the Fuzzy part, was part of ESX, which was discontinued with the 5.0 series of ESX products.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#97

Post by angersock » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

jcoffland wrote: post #93

huhtenberg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being so lax on legal matters for such company shows very low level of their management's professionalism. Actually, no, it doesn't. It merely means that the management views GPL violations as a low-probability calculated risk. As in "we know that we can be in compliance, but we won't be wasting any resources on it until it's justified". It has nothing to do with the professionalism.

In a world where lying and cheating when it's convienient is considered professional, you're right.

Welcome to business!

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#98

Post by kjak » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #91

shmerl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know, they can stop being jerks and release sources for the code they derived from the GPLed one. > It's just that this GPL thing doesn't even register on their legal radar It should register. > Similarly any concerns raised by engineering are never taken seriously by the legal council. Not in any serious company to my experience. Being so lax on legal matters for such company shows very low level of their man…

> Being so lax on legal matters for such company shows very low level of their management's professionalism. Actually, no, it doesn't. It merely means that the management views GPL violations as a low-probability calculated risk. As in "we know that we can be in compliance, but we won't be wasting any resources on it until it's justified". It has nothing to do with the professionalism.

> As in "we know that we can be in compliance, but we won't be wasting any resources on it until it's justified". It has nothing to do with the professionalism.

It sounds like it has everything to do with professionalism.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#99

Post by aros » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:23 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #91

shmerl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know, they can stop being jerks and release sources for the code they derived from the GPLed one. > It's just that this GPL thing doesn't even register on their legal radar It should register. > Similarly any concerns raised by engineering are never taken seriously by the legal council. Not in any serious company to my experience. Being so lax on legal matters for such company shows very low level of their man…

> Being so lax on legal matters for such company shows very low level of their management's professionalism. Actually, no, it doesn't. It merely means that the management views GPL violations as a low-probability calculated risk. As in "we know that we can be in compliance, but we won't be wasting any resources on it until it's justified". It has nothing to do with the professionalism.

What a bizarre world we live in where willful violations of a legally binding license (a license which attempts to keep knowledge in the open) is considered nothing more than a "calculated risk."

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#100

Post by geofft » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:24 PM UTC

froseph wrote: post #70

dmitrygr wrote: post #50

I very much doubt the accuracy of their claims that vmkernel is largely a copy of linux ( http://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/linux-vs-vmkernel_... ) Mostly since in many of those drivers, it performs better than linux, but also because vmware did not hire idiots, (and non-idiots know not to ever use GPL code). Source: worked there a while ago.

The wayback machine* has Zachary Amsden's opinion in 2007 why the vmkernel (and other components) are not in violation of GPL. It's an interesting read. He concludes: > 1) There is no argument that depending on a Linux console OS makes any part of ESX subject to GPL that is not already opene sourced. We have open sourced those GPL components of the system which we have modified and given the changes back to the commu…

> 1) There is no argument that depending on a Linux console OS makes any part of ESX subject to GPL that is not already opene sourced.

Yes there is: the GPLv2 says:

"If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."

You would have to not consider the ESX product "a whole which is a work based on" the COS.

Naturally, this interpretation would extend to just about everyone who builds virtual appliances, special-purpose bootable CDs, etc. So it would be an unfortunate interpretation. (In particular, you couldn't intermingle GPLv2 and GPLv3 software on a virtual appliance!) But just because it is unfortunate does not mean it is not valid.

[btw, it's worth noting that the COS basically no longer exists.]