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VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

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Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#141

Post by slapshot »

tinco wrote: post #132

I'm no lawyer, but isn't the most exciting fact about this lawsuit that it takes place in Germany? That means no settlements or other silly American business. Just two parties making their case in front of a judge, and the judge deciding who is right and what the repercussions are.

Surely, two parties can settle a civil case in Germany. Otherwise every dispute between two neighbors over a fence would end up taking up the court's time when they are perfectly capable of agreeing to a solution.

Two seconds of Google research suggest that settlements are possible: https://books.google.com/books?id=zZoibg8oR1QC&pg=PA132&lpg=...

You might mean plea bargaining, which is more of a US-centric feature, but that's only applicable to criminal cases. This is a civil suit between two parties.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#142

Post by hga »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #127
hga wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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 ma…

I don't disagree that only people with an ownership right in the copyright have standing, but I note that this has been worked around by a variety of means. The poster child being people like Prenda Law who used dubious techniques to get just enough copyright ownership on something (in their case porn) to sue. Also, as many have noted and some have experienced, at least in the US it is pretty easy to get sued whether…

Except, of course, Prenda Law didn't get around copyright law, but their case is exceptional and I don't think it, or what you've correctly pointed out about how in the US it is easy to get sued, demonstrates much beyond the advantages of loser pays law systems (as I understand it, all of the world but the US).

A better one, that I'm a lot more familiar with, is Stephens Media, their property the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righthaven which produced a Federal District Court decision that in order to sue, one must actually own the copyright.

But if you're just worried about the prospect of being sued, none of this matters as you point out. New SCO dragged our corner of the world through a huge, long and expensive drama about code that they never had the copyright to, and knew in advance they didn't. Which means that risk exists for any code you don't write yourself....

I'm not sure the SCO case shows the progression you cite. As far as I can remember, everyone assumed SCO had the copyright, there was lots of litigation based on that, and it took years for the case(s) to wander around until in rather a big surprise we learned they didn't. Of course, to continue the theme of "(too) easy to get sued", there should have been severe sanctions levied on the parties responsible for that fraud, which somehow never seems to happen in the US.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#143

Post by pmontra »

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...

And even if they didn't have an office there, they have customers in Germany. When there is money flowing there are many ways to punish a company.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#144

Post by belorn »

[deleted] wrote: post #134
belorn wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, Microsoft is distributing and loading GPL'ed kernel modules for windows? I did not even know windows kernel had modules, and even less so that they distribute and use third-party developed gplv2 modules. Are Microsoft shipping this with windows 7, windows 8, or windows server 2012, and is there a list somewhere for the shipped modules?

[deleted]

If I understand you correctly, you think Microsoft would be held liable for copyright infringement if someone installs a GPLv2 driver into their own personal installation of windows?

That is not how copyright infringement work. To be held liable, you have to distribute* a copyrighted work and then fail to comply with the license. Microsoft is as you say not distributing GPL'ed kernel modules, so there is no possible way* for them to help liable for GPLv2 windows kernel modules.

A third-party windows distributor could be help liable if they bundled the modules with preinstalled windows machines. In that case, that third party would have to stop distributing the module, or beg Microsoft to release the source code for windows under GPLv2.

* The pirate bay crew got charged for assisting in copyright infringement without distribution, but at least there was the accusation that someone somewhere did distribute a copyrighted work without permission.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#145

Post by edmccard »

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…

>those lawyers would write "As you know VMWARE was damaged to the tune of several billion dollars because they didn't use the GPL correctly, and we know that you aren't using GPL correctly either..."

If the GPL is litigated to the point of a published decision, doesn't that give the legal team of the targeted company the ability to say "actually, we know we ARE using it correctly, so buzz off"?

According to the lwn link 'JoshTriplett provided upthread, corporate general counsels often contact the Conservancy to request GPL enforcement: "Their interest, instead, is in a demonstration that the GPL has teeth so that they can be taken seriously when they tell management that the company must comply with the license terms of the code it ships. "

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#146

Post by kion »

geofft wrote: post #102
kion wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They still use it for bootstrapping, right? I know they've gotten rid of the Red Hat-ish userspace, but according to the LWN article, there's still a Linux kernel involved and a kernel module used to pass control to vmkernel. (Is the word "vmnix" wrong? Does it apply only to the entire Red Hat-ish distribution in the COS, and not to the Linux stepping stone alone?)

To answer the 2nd part of the question:

vmnix was the name of the Linux kernel module that was loaded during the Service Console's boot process.

The terms "Service Console", "Console OS (COS)" were at times used interchangeably and referred to the Redhat distro you logged into at the terminal.

VSphere 4.0 had 2 versions: ESX (with COS) and ESXi (without COS). In 5.0 the COS was removed entirely.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#147

Post by Tomte »

slapshot wrote: post #141
tinco wrote: post #132

I'm no lawyer, but isn't the most exciting fact about this lawsuit that it takes place in Germany? That means no settlements or other silly American business. Just two parties making their case in front of a judge, and the judge deciding who is right and what the repercussions are.

Surely, two parties can settle a civil case in Germany. Otherwise every dispute between two neighbors over a fence would end up taking up the court's time when they are perfectly capable of agreeing to a solution. Two seconds of Google research suggest that settlements are possible: https://books.google.com/books?id=zZoibg8oR1QC&pg=PA132&lpg=... You might mean plea bargaining, which is more of a US-centric feature, b…

We also have plea bargaining, in various forms.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#148

Post by bad_user »

wil421 wrote: post #76
uniformlyrandom wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

That's a shady article and source.

If Google has offices in France, and they probably do, then Google must respect French laws. A country has sovereignty over its territory, which means that if you want to operate under it, you must respect its laws.

Don't know what happened with that lawsuit you mentioned, but if Google won, then it must have been because it was a stupid lawsuit.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#149

Post by delsarto »

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.

I don't think it is as clear cut at all, but that makes it much more interesting. I left a comment there, but it bears some repeating I think

ESXi's kernel does not bootstrap itself from Linux at all.

There is no linux kernel as such [1]

ESXi does reuse linux kernel drivers ... a lot of them. But the way this happens is through a well-defined API provided by (proprietary) vmkernel called vmkapi. What you are seeing in the code above is the mapping between various Linux API's and these calls to the vmkernel.

I have no idea about the complaint. VMware's position is probably that anyone can go and write anything they want against the vmkernel's vmkapi interface. Indeed some vendors ship drivers written espeically for this API.

VMware have chosen to write a linuxvmkapi interface, which then allows them to re-use many linux drivers. All of the linuxvmkapi interface is released, along with the drivers and any modifications and this is considered sufficient. My guess is that the software conservatories position is that it is not.

Note exactly the other thing happens on the "other" side -- between user-land and the vmkernel. ESXi uses glibc ... but of course that interfaces to vmkernel via standard system calls. Maybe that's part of it too, I don't know.

So this may be a fight over API boundaries and where the GPL starts and stops. That's quite interesting...

[1] There was with the ESX product, which shipped a version of Red Hat. That hasn't been around for ages

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