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VMware May Violate Linux Copyrights
Nailer writes "Bloomberg believe VMware's IPO today may the largest technology offering since Google. But doubts have been cast over the company's supposedly proprietary ESX product, as top 10 Linux contributor Christopher Hellwig claims the software may violate Linux kernel copyrights. 'Is Hellwig right, and is VMware a derived product of Linux? Unless vmkernel can be loaded without the Linux kernel, it would appear so. VMware was developed from another, long ago OS created as a research project, but it's unclear whether vmkernel was ported from that OS or rewritten as the Linux-requiring binary blob. What's more of an issue is that VMware had these serious questions posed directly to them a year ago, repeated in a public forum many times since, but have yet to respond at all.'"
Copyright gets infringed, licenses get violated.
The Banjo Players Must Die!
So? If they want to make it closed source, they certainly shouldn't use Linux or GPL software in their products.
Before you all massacre me: I see your real point, that they will fear using Linux as a base operating system for their products, even when that usage wouldn't cause their code to fall under GPL. But should that stop people from protecting their IP? Contributors to the Linux kernel and other GPL products have issued an exclusive license under which their copyrighted material should be released. Allowing corporations to desecrate this for the lofty goal of popularizing Linux doesn't make sense. GPL is what it is, and if it doesn't become any more popular because of it's "viral" nature or even perception of such, so be it. Otherwise you will just be destroying the authors goals - to keep the software free and open at all costs.
Bottom line is, if it adds to the negative perception of GPL, it's worth advertising the positive, but certainly *not* worth dismissing the issue. Stand by the GPL principals, or don't use them in the first place.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
There is, of course, a way that they aren't violating linux copyrights: They may simply be using the Linux Kernel to get the hardware into a known state prior to loading the VMkernel. Similar projects include LinuxBIOS, and Linux's own kexec (kexec lets you boot a new linux kernel without actually 'booting').
Of course, it is a violation if ESX is actually running a modified Linux Kernel, instead of using the Linux Kernel as a bootloader. Using the Linux Kernel as a bootloader is a done deal; just look up 'kexec' for proof of it. (Though I'm fairly certain kexec isn't what VMware uses).
But even then, remember that ESX is their "enterprise" product, which acts more like a hypervisor, and is not to be confused with VMware Workstation, VMware Player, or VMware Server.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
I've never used ESX, but I would imagin that no matter what, ESX needs driver support.
Being a hypervisor, it has to access all kinds of devices like VGA consoles, serial ports, Fibre Channel HBAs, SCSI HBAs, IDE controllers (for CDROMs), Ethernet adapters, etc., etc. So my question is, where does the ESX hypervisor (vmkernel) get these? Does it pull them from Linux or did they write their own? This hardware _HAS_ to be setup, initialized, and arbitrated. Does vmkernel have it's own stack of device drivers, or does it conveniently run the ones in the Linux "bootloader"?
I'm thinking there's more to this than just the binary blob issue...