VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation • Hacker News Board

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#211

Post by TheHippo » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 1:18 AM UTC

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.

This will take place in German courts and from all what I known about the judicature here you cannot stretch a process endlessly if the judges don't allow it. Also this should a civil court (??) case, where usually the loosing side pays for the lawyers of the other side. (When you're right it is in general, from a financial point, always good to sue, because you only have to cover the court fees, about 150$ or nothing if you can prove that you have a low income.)

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#212

Post by rdtsc » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 1:39 AM UTC

emacsen wrote: post #193

rdtsc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They violated the GPL, but to comply with the license would mean that they'd have to release a lot of code that they don't want to release. Well they could replace the component with proprietary (so there is not license to comply with), stop releasing the old version and then probably settle to pay fines or damages. In other words the legal outcome of GPL violations is not necessarily being forced to release the re…

Right but they also didn't have rights to distribute the work. There will be issues of demonstrating damages, but you can't just say "Oh sure I violated your copyright... but now that you take me to court, I'll stop." and expect to get off without paying anything.

Well that's why I said they'll probably be forced to pay a fine or damages. They could for example look at number of licenses VMWare sold with the GPL code in it, then take a fraction of the profits from each or something like that.

Stopping will probably just be another outcome unless they can come with some kind of agreement, like a separate commercial relicensed version of the GPL (but with multiple contributors that becomes a nightmare)

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#213

Post by tw04 » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 1:48 AM UTC

aabbccdd wrote: post #84

tw04 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with OpenStack as a replacement for VMware (outside of the complexity of installation), is that most people using VMware have an expectation of high availability being table stakes (a VM automatically being rebooted on a different node in the event of a node failure). OpenStack assumes the software on the front end can tolerate a node going down in it's current form and that the front-end application will…

SUSE offers High Availability support for the recently released SUSE Openstack Cloud 5 https://www.suse.com/documentation/suse-cloud-5/ Additionally it supports some components from vmWare: https://www.suse.com/documentation/suse-cloud-5/book_cloud_d... Disclaimer: I work at SUSE.

Well, since you work there, perhaps you can let them know that while www.suse.com resolves to an IPv6 address, your webserver doesn't actually serve up any pages via IPv6. So for those with native v6 connectivity like myself, the page just won't load.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#214

Post by tw04 » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 1:58 AM UTC

anonemployee wrote: post #103

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, so it never percolates down to engineering. VMware engineer here. This should not be construed as commenting on an ongoing court case (and I've never worked on the vmkernel), but I would like to respond to: At least in my organization: Legal is definitely aware of the GPL. Engineers are definitely aware of the GPL. Adding a dependency on a GP…

Out of curiosity - if GPL is taken so seriously, why do customers have to jump through so many hoops to get copies of source. Last I checked you are required to send a letter via snailmail to legal counsel @vmware and if they deem you worthy, they send back physical media with copies of the source.

I can't imagine a less open-source friendly system...

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#215

Post by Patrick_Devine » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 2:27 AM UTC

delsarto wrote: post #149

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 i…

I worked at VMware for over 11 years and was one of the first dozen or so people on the vmkernel team (which produced ESX and later ESXi), although I left several years ago.

If I recall correctly, the source tarball was created from a simple script which pulled in a bunch of open source files which were stuck into their own separate branch in the source repository.

To my knowledge, there wasn't any linux source in the vmkernel. We did use plenty of open source code, such as busybox, but my understanding was it was always in user space and the source was always published.

It's possible that Christoph's code was just pulled in and published with a bunch of other crap that wasn't actually in the product, but someone had checked it into the open source part of the source tree.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#216

Post by spopejoy » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 2:27 AM UTC

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…

Meh. Enterprise is already terrified of GPL -- but they have to use it because there's simply too much good software written under the license. There's lots of emphasis these days to "pretty please avoid using GPL" but they simply put up with it in the end because it's counter-productive not to.

Also, most super-big cos are not in the business of selling software but using it, despite what they may think. VMWare on the other hand should know better.

Saying that they'll Y2K away from it cuz of this lawsuit sounds a little like FUD to me.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#217

Post by delinka » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 2:38 AM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #214

anonemployee wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just that this GPL thing doesn't even register on their legal radar, so it never percolates down to engineering. VMware engineer here. This should not be construed as commenting on an ongoing court case (and I've never worked on the vmkernel), but I would like to respond to: At least in my organization: Legal is definitely aware of the GPL. Engineers are definitely aware of the GPL. Adding a dependency on a GP…

Out of curiosity - if GPL is taken so seriously, why do customers have to jump through so many hoops to get copies of source. Last I checked you are required to send a letter via snailmail to legal counsel @vmware and if they deem you worthy, they send back physical media with copies of the source. I can't imagine a less open-source friendly system...

It's not required to be "friendly" nor is it required to be convenient for you. It's designed to be compliant, internally audit-able, and for free they get the ability to frustrate you into not requesting copies.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#218

Post by ralmidani » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 2:44 AM UTC

spopejoy wrote: post #216

ChuckMcM wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Meh. Enterprise is already terrified of GPL -- but they have to use it because there's simply too much good software written under the license. There's lots of emphasis these days to "pretty please avoid using GPL" but they simply put up with it in the end because it's counter-productive not to. Also, most super-big cos are not in the business of selling software but using it, despite what they may think. VMWare on t…

If they lose the lawsuit and their license is terminated, they will have no choice but to remove the software in question.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#219

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 2:46 AM UTC

spopejoy wrote: post #216

ChuckMcM wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Meh. Enterprise is already terrified of GPL -- but they have to use it because there's simply too much good software written under the license. There's lots of emphasis these days to "pretty please avoid using GPL" but they simply put up with it in the end because it's counter-productive not to. Also, most super-big cos are not in the business of selling software but using it, despite what they may think. VMWare on t…

> Enterprise is already terrified of GPL

Maybe I worked only in surprisingly enlightened enterprises, but the worst fear I was informed about regarded lack of support by a "real" company.

Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation

#220

Post by Igglyboo » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 2:59 AM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #214

anonemployee wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just that this GPL thing doesn't even register on their legal radar, so it never percolates down to engineering. VMware engineer here. This should not be construed as commenting on an ongoing court case (and I've never worked on the vmkernel), but I would like to respond to: At least in my organization: Legal is definitely aware of the GPL. Engineers are definitely aware of the GPL. Adding a dependency on a GP…

Out of curiosity - if GPL is taken so seriously, why do customers have to jump through so many hoops to get copies of source. Last I checked you are required to send a letter via snailmail to legal counsel @vmware and if they deem you worthy, they send back physical media with copies of the source. I can't imagine a less open-source friendly system...

It is taken as seriously as is has to be. They are required to provide the source, they are not required to make obtaining the source a pleasant experience.