It feels weird not to read about this on Groklaw.
It feels less informed. HN covers tech to a fine point but Groklaw, IMO, remains untouched for its legal coverage.
VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
281–290 of 299 posts
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except they get one from section 6. You are reading who is giving who a license wrong. Redhat, or whoever they download from, is the "you" there. Not the person who license was terminated. So let's fill in the blanks: 6. Each time Redhat redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the company who violated the license automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or m…
It's odd you keep saying "all open source lawyers" agree with you, because I can't figure out who you could possibly mean. Like, which specific human being do you believe agrees with you? I've studied copyleft almost daily for two decades, and I'm aware of the position of nearly anyone who has ever called themselves an "open source lawyer" in the world, so one would think I'd know who you are talking about since I "k…
What do you mean by trolling?
It looks like a shitty, evidence free insinuation of dishonesty used as a rhetorical tactic, but that's a big assumption to make.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
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-Jou…
Who kept propping up SCO to draw out that legal battle for so long?
Microsoft, as far as we could tell during the saga.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re: [1] There's an argument that ESXi was released to handle these concerns, which predate ESXi's release. I ran venturecake which first published the story, showing how the Linux kernel started vmkernel, not the other way around. Proprietary kernel modules are considered derived works unless they can run independently (eg, nvidia.ko isn't generally considered to be a derived work because it's largely code ported fro…
I dunno, a bootloader seems like the most clear-cut example of something not being a derived work you could get - it doesn't care about the code being bootloeaded and vice-versa, and the API between the two is about as trivial as it can get. What matters according to the GPL isn't whether the code runs on other platforms but how deeply intertwined it is with the kernel; for most Linux drivers, whether it runs on othe…
There is no boot loader. This is the Linux kernel module interface. The boot loader used on ESX was an actual boot loader, IIRC grub.
Arguing kernel modules are derived works from the kernel is very very different from arguing user space software is derived from an OS.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#285Earlier 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…
Re: [1] There's an argument that ESXi was released to handle these concerns, which predate ESXi's release. I ran venturecake which first published the story, showing how the Linux kernel started vmkernel, not the other way around. Proprietary kernel modules are considered derived works unless they can run independently (eg, nvidia.ko isn't generally considered to be a derived work because it's largely code ported fro…
> nvidia.ko isn't generally considered to be a derived work
That's far from clear. Many core developers (including Torvalds, IIRC, but correct me if I'm wrong) are on the record that they consider Nvidia to violate the spirit and/or the letter of the GPL there. It's just that nobody cares enough to litigate.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah, which company on Earth large enough to have an IT department doesn't use Linux somewhere, for example? I know I would be hard pressed to find one.
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"…
You're making this "loophole" up. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9156539
Interesting. Is that an argument you've seen confirmed by a lawyer, or are you yourself actually a open-source software licensing lawyer, like 'DannyBee is?
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#288As a VMWare customer, this makes me consider their ethics. If they're unethical, shouldn't we look into switching away from their product? I'm not aware of many competitors in their market space - Hyper-V certainly, but that's less of an option for some. Short of rearchitecting our service as a series of containers, what action can conscientious corporate leaders take?
The practical problem is that VMWare is the best by a ridiculous amount. The VM is better, the management tools are ridiculously better.
"The best" is, as always, depending on what you need to do.
I'm seeing much better direct device I/O on KVM than on ESXi (which is saying a lot actually, since raw I/O is a bit tricky on the latter).
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
The practical problem is that VMWare is the best by a ridiculous amount. The VM is better, the management tools are ridiculously better.
"The best" is, as always, depending on what you need to do. I'm seeing much better direct device I/O on KVM than on ESXi (which is saying a lot actually, since raw I/O is a bit tricky on the latter).
That is useful information, thank you :-)
Re: VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. Part of this seems to be related to something I wrote about back in 2007 when I was an industry analyst: http://vmblog.com/archive/2007/08/22/vmware-and-the-gpl.aspx (IANAL, my opinion only, etc.)
That's a great link. That clarifies the relationship between the vmkernel and Linux. And I think it's closer to how I think vmmon works in Workstation: you load the module, and as part of initialization, it hoists itself as owner of the CPU and stuffs the existing system in a world, creating what Xen would call "dom0". If I'm reading you right, it sounds like ESX uses "vmnix" to boot from disk and initialize hardware…
They do. Those who builds and sells the stuff that VMware runs on has tech centers set up just to support Linux.
IBM and whatever ended up in HP probably spent hundreds of million (or more) to make sure Linux runs on anything anywhere. You don't have to spend that on writing an operating system that could run on select hardware at best, you can leverage their work and run on commodity hardware, for free.
Thanks to the reciprocity of the license they can do this with the guarantee that their competitors will do the same.
VMware did rip out the drivers from Linux and use in their own closed product, which is then guaranteed to run anything with no further work required. They argue, and this may very well be so, that since they wrote a binary shim between the Linux stuff and their own they are two separate products. They can therefore release the source of the shim only.
While that's clearly against the spirit of the licensors (which they have made abundantly clear over the years), it will be very interesting to see if it also is against the letter of the law.