Serves them right for not using permissively licensed code!
VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
221–230 of 299 posts
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#222Earlier 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."
I'm sure you've never jaywalked or littered or sped in a car and thought to yourself "there's no way i'll get in trouble for this so i'll do it anyway". Except in VMware's case they are much large than a single person so their list of "low risk" crimes is larger.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
GNU licenses don't exist to be "lures". They exist to make it difficult to be parasitic to the open source world. Stallman isn't out to destroy commercial software. He's out to ensure freedom of computing for all. If commercial software can't function without taking away freedom, then that's the problem of those business models.
Eh, what? Because 'free software with commercial support offering' is not 'commercial software. Your claim is "Stallman isn't out to destroy commercial software. If commercial software can't function without being free, then that's its problem" - where one is the very exact opposite of the other. "He doesn't want to kill it. But if it can't survive without being something it's inherently the opposite of, well, that's…
Implicit is that I believe commercial software can exist while still being free.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
From reading the linked article, it read to me like the complaint asserts that VMKernel itself is a violation of the GPL. If I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me, but these statements seems to point in this direction Conservancy discovered that VMware had failed to provide nor offer any source code for the version of BusyBox included in VMware's ESXi products But ESXi is not a purely open-source product; it also…
This sounds more like Oracle vs Google regarding Java, where VMWare, like Google, is stating that APIs are not copyrightable, and the SFC, like Oracle, is claiming that even those APIs are copyrightable.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
[deleted]
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?
Since the comment you were responding to has been deleted, I'm not sure if my comment will clarify anything for you. But it is possible, so here goes:
> Wait, Microsoft is distributing and loading GPL'ed kernel modules for windows?
A few years ago, the Linux kernel project accepted several patches from Microsoft that were meant to make it easier to run Linux in a VM hosted on a Windows machine ( http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2011/07/14/#microsoft-linux-aut... ).
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#226I didn't bother to read it all, but all that stuff makes me feel apathy. I very much believe, that VMWare did something wrong. Maybe even illegal. I believe they deserve to be punished for that. But what I see here doesn't look like punishment at all.
What does that solve? Whom does it help? For VMWare it's just professional risk, they have their lawyers, they know their business. So even if it ends up extremely bad for them (which I doubt) it will be just "nasty day at work" and they'll recover somehow. And sure as hell it won't be tragic for EMC (if they notice it at all). The "victim" won't be rewarded as well, because "victims" are ordinary Linux-kernel contributors scattered over the world.
So what the whole thing really is: gathering money to feed some lawyers, who might not look as bad as VMWare when you read all that story, but in fact are far less useful for society than even VMWare, who is supposed to be the evil guy here.
It just makes me think how pointless all that stuff is. It's depressing.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, i actually don't think that's the case. This seems more a case of "they screwed up, and as a result got asked to open source something they need to, but business-wise think would be a huge monetary loss". So they are going to court because the worst that can happen is pretty much what they were already asked to do - open source vmkernel, etc. The copyright infringement money damages are probably minimal or nothin…
They have a great deal to lose. The consequences of being found to have violated the GPL include having your license to use GPL'ed code revoked .
Again, no, it doesn't in the case of GPLv2 code (which is what we are talking about).
See my other comment.
The second they came back in compliance, they could redownload the exact source they copied, from wherever they got it, and they'd have a fresh, brand new license, with no problems.
GPLv3 fixed this "loophole".
In fact, you can see what others have attempted (and failed) to do to try to prevent this "loophole" from functioning.
Look at: www.ximpleware.com
(they were involved in GPL litigation against Versata)
It says, at the bottom "All licenses to any parties in litigation with XimpleWare have been expressly terminated. No new license, and no renewal of any revoked license, is granted to those parties as a result of re-downloading software from this or any other website"
This is there because they know of this exact problem, and didn't want versata to be able to avoid the lawsuit.
Of course, this text does not override the GPL in any way, and since it was given to them under the GPL, they can't now go back and say "those copies you have are retroactively under a different license". So it's pointless text, but hopefully this gives you an idea that what i said is not just "random lawyer kibitzing".
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean unethical business.
Ethics don't enter into it--you might be thinking of negative externalities. That's the responsibility of the person running things next fiscal year. In the mean time, quit worrying and go deliver shareholder value.
> That's the responsibility of the person running things next fiscal year. In the mean time, quit worrying and go deliver shareholder value.
No, that's a weird attitude (i.e. I'll create a mess today, next person will clean it tomorrow). One has to be responsible for the mess, and actually preventing it to begin with. What you described is exactly the lack of professionalism.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#229The 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.
Every day I enjoy being "free" by not getting stolen from, since thievery is restricted by my government. I also enjoy that every driver is restricted by rules on the road, as I can walk "freely" without being crushed. I can do so many things in my life, and most of them would not be possible without the massive number of restrictions that is put on people around me. I only wish more people could be this free.
Those restrictions don't guarantee any of those freedoms.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, what? Because 'free software with commercial support offering' is not 'commercial software. Your claim is "Stallman isn't out to destroy commercial software. If commercial software can't function without being free, then that's its problem" - where one is the very exact opposite of the other. "He doesn't want to kill it. But if it can't survive without being something it's inherently the opposite of, well, that's…
Implicit is that I believe commercial software can exist while still being free.
How so? Commercial -support-, perhaps. Butt in not sure how offering to sell software that is free I'd any business model. And that's my point, Stallman absolutely DOES want to kill commercial software (as is this right)