VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

Post by dogma1138 » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:14 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #86

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…

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?

Post by dopamean » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:20 PM UTC

sswaner wrote: post #130

I support Hellwig and the Conservancy in their claim, but I see an unfortunate consequence: This further hinders corporate adoption of open source software. This lawsuit reinforce the corporate legal mindset that "use of open source invites litigation...".

Post by belorn » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:21 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…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:23 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #29

cjbprime wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It started out that way, but as I understand the release materials here, this is now about Hellwig's copyright on core kernel code (e.g. the VFS), which VMWare has integrated into their product. I wonder what they're thinking. At least with nVidia there's a plausible sounding defense that goes like "hey, we just wrote a shim to load this platform independent code we already had lying around, so our platform independe…

I've seen it argued on HN that the GPL's definition of a derivative work differs from the legal definition, and if you never distribute the GPL'd code, you aren't bound by it. Thus, one could write kernel drivers, which (it was argued) are not derivative works under copyright, and be safe as long as the kernel is not redistributed by the same entity.

Post by jra_samba » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 8:27 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #15

jra_samba wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please help ! There's currently a $50k challenge match going on so anything you donate will be doubled. Disclaimer - I'm on the Board of Directors of Conservancy.

Your ticker doesn't appear to be updating? Maybe that's by design?