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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
It's hilarious to GPL advocates pretend their license is about freedom, because it's not. The GPL is about forcing other people to do things with code that the writers of the license want. If you simply want people to have the freedom to do whatever they want to do with code, you'll support something less restrictive (BSD license, for instance) or just support code being released into the public domain. That would allow people to do whatever they wanted with the code. The GPL exists to control what people can do with code. If you're into control — for financial reasons or ideological reasons —you're free to use a license that supports your agenda. But it's dishonest to pretend the GPL is about freedom. It's about controlling what people can do with software. The irony and hypocrisy are easy to see.