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VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

sfconservancy.org

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Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#111

Post by hga »

mrsteveman1 wrote: post #45
geofft wrote: post #7

Earlier 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…

> I think the remaining Linux parts mostly exist as hardware drivers, and VMware is providing the core kernel routines like scheduling and memory management and "world" management (equivalent to process management, but it's a hypervisor). That description of vmkernel reminds me of Xen's hypervisor (dom0 handling hardware access, providing drivers but otherwise still sitting "above" the hypervisor), one technical diff…

I don't think so. Xen is a Type 1 "bare metal" hypervisor, perhaps like ESXi, this is about a Type 2 hypervisor like Virtual Box: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor#Classification.

Proper Type 1 hypervisors run on top of the bare metal, boot first, and then in the case of Xen load a privileged virtual machine as Dom0 which has access to the bare hardware, which can be e.g. NetBSD in addition to Linux. Dom0's device drivers then provide as services raw block and network devices to the DomUs (and there can also be pass-through of devices to DomUs, something I'm not familiar with).

So the isolation is very white line, and as we engineers view it, not GPL violating. But as someone else has noted, the address space concept is not a legal one.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#112

Post by makeitsuckless »

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…

I seem to be missing the part where this behavior of VMWare is not unethical.

This is a software company, not a chocolate factory. "Doesn't even register" isn't an accident, it's a choice in the same way ignoring the speed limit is a choice.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#113

Post by s73v3r »

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…

>The thing is that it's not that VMWare is evil or unethical.

Evil? No, probably not. Unethical? I would say so.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#114

Post by robmccoll »

paulhauggis wrote: post #108

The GNU license doesn't sound very "free" to me. It's strange that the owners of GNU code think that all additions to their code should rightly be released to the public (even if they never wrote the additions). The original code is still "free" for the world to use, so there really isn't anything being taken.

I don't think it works that way. I believe the GPL stipulates that you must make your source code available to any party to which you distribute your binary. If you are using a modifying GPL code internal to your organization but not giving the any of the compiled binaries to anyone, you are under no obligation to release the code.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#115

Post by thrillgore »

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…

> It's just that this GPL thing doesn't even register on their legal radar

Then everyone in their legal department needs to be fired yesterday.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#116

Post by hga »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #104
nordsieck wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That would be an interesting result. To my knowledge the GPL (any version) hasn't actually been litigated to the point of a published decision (would love to hear that it had). That said, (and continuing with my possibly incorrect assumption that the GPL hasn't been litigated) if it does get decided that this remedy can be enforced by the license holders through the court, I expect it will create the largest software…

"The business risk would become too great that they might be litigated by a rival into inoperation."

Only the owners of a copyright have standing to sue, so I think the complete version of your concept fails unless, like in this case, the copyrights are held by many people instead of being assigned to one person or organization. I also can't imagine that a lot of companies haven't considered this risk, it hardly matters to such companies if this hasn't reached the level of a contested (vs. default) decision if they believe it could if pushed. E.g. see this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9153278

EDIT: Maybe not true for copyleft software, reported not to be true in France (see below).

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#117

Post by [deleted] »

aros wrote: post #99
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.

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."

[deleted]

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#119

Post by charlesnw »

shmerl wrote: post #89
the_af wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since the GPL is one of the most widely known copyleft licenses out there. I can expect a layman to not know about it, but the software engineers at VMWare?

It sounds from the above comment that even if engineers raise this issue, their legal department dismisses it. I find it bizarre for any serious company.

Yes exactly. Most large organizations (with in house counsel) take feedback from software/systems engineering very seriously. For compliance (especially licenses) contract requirements etc. Legal exists to serve/protect the organization.
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