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Software Freedom Conservancy Funds GPL Suit Against VMWare
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes with this excerpt from a news release from the Software Freedom Conservancy: Software Freedom Conservancy announces today Christoph Hellwig's lawsuit against VMware in the district court of Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany. This is the regretful but necessary next step in both Hellwig and Conservancy's ongoing effort to convince VMware to comply properly with the terms of the GPLv2, the license of Linux and many other Open Source and Free Software included in VMware's ESXi products. Serge Wroclawski points out the SFC's technical FAQ about the suit. One nugget: This case is specifically regarding a combined work that VMware allegedly created by combining their own code (“vmkernel”) with portions of Linux's code, which was licensed only under GPLv2. As such, this, to our knowledge, marks the first time an enforcement case is exclusively focused on this type of legal question relating to GPL
To donate funds to Conservancy GPL compliance efforts see here:
http://sfconservancy.org/linux...
They are not using the entire linux kernel. At this point most of vmkernel is their own code and they are (for the most part) only linking in the parts of the linux kernel that deal with hardware. Linux has way better hardware support than BSD.
They are taking a calculated risk knowing that very few GPL lawsuits actually went to court. They know it takes money to fight a legal battle and hope the opposing side doesn't have it, or will run out of it before reaching a final verdict. And finally, from the fact that they've been at this since 2012 - they probably think that it's a fairly cost-efficient way to buy more time and make business.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The controversial part, as I understand it, is the difference in interpretation of a license's conditions. For example, the difference between an "aggregation" and a "combined work" in the GPLv2 confused at least one Slashdot user.
After skimming the GPLv2, found under section 3:
For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
Seems like it includes building and installation to me.
The answer to this should have been obvious 8 years ago when they:
1. Made their management tools run on only Windows, shitting on the Linux community
2. Deprecated VMWare Server 1.x (free and very functional) for VMWare Server 2 (free and barely functional)
There are far better free alternatives out there nowadays if you're not managing a full-blown cloud infrastructure (see: LXC and KVM). And if you are, there's OpenStack.
Judging by the diagram, the "offending sections" are huge swathes of virtualisation-specific code that ESXi runs on, written or modified by VMWare.
Being forced to open-source their largest software project is a quite conceivable (even if unlikely) outcome. Not everyone who has a part in the Linux kernel is going to accept "Here's some cash, ssshh, don't tell anyone we cocked up" compared to forcing them to open their code.
VMWare accepted a (believed to be) legally binding agreement to open any code that modified or become part of the kernel under GPL licences to anyone who asked. You can't always buy your way out of such obligations with money, and the courts may well end up showing that.
And that... that's gotta hurt the bottom line to have vast portions of ESXi available as open-source software.
You are mistaken in thinking they use the Linux kernel in ESXi. There is no Linux kernel anywhere in ESXi.
They have written their own operating system from scratch, and they did a complete rewrite of the kernel in the update from ESXi 3.5 to 4.0.
What they have done is copied a subset the interface API from the Linux kernel. Much how like the Wine Project has copied API details from Win32 without permission from Microsoft.
This allows existing driver source code that already works in Linux to be compiled using the VMware driver development kit into a binary that can be loaded as a driver in ESXi.
This means that hardware vendors can write the driver once, and then it could be built for either Linux or ESXi, so that seems beneficial for Linux users to have more drivers still being written for Linux.
This is considered a legacy framework, and VMware is already phasing this out... see details on the new native driver framework
This will be sad, as the native driver framework is proprietary, and it will likely no longer be possible to write your own drivers for ESXi, once vmklinux is gone, without purchasing the driver development tools at high $$$.
Also, major enterprises are running ESXi on much of their hardware, so the incentive may go away for many manufacturers to release information or develop Linux drivers; they can just produce their binary ESXi drivers and be done with it.