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VMware Touts Dismissal of Linux GPL Lawsuit (zdnet.com)
"For over a decade, VMware has been accused of illegally using Linux code in its VMware ESX bare-metal virtual machine hypervisor," reports ZDNet, adding that "A German court has dismissed the case, but the struggle may not be over."
VMware stood accused of illegally using Linux code in its flagship VMware ESX bare-metal virtual machine (VM) hypervisor... In 2011, the Software Freedom Conservancy, a non-profit organization that promotes open-source software, discovered that VMware had failed to properly license any Linux or BusyBox, a popular embedded Linux toolkit, source code... In 2015, having exhausted all other means, [Linux kernel developer Christoph] Hellweg and the Software Freedom Conservancy sued VMware in the district court of Hamburg in Germany. Besides the general violation of the GPLv2, "Conservancy and Hellwig specifically assert that VMware has combined copyrighted Linux code, licensed under GPLv2, with their own proprietary code called 'vmkernel' and distributed the entire combined work without providing nor offering complete, corresponding source code for that combined work under terms of the GPLv2."
The German court disagreed in November 2018. Helwig appealed and continued the fight, saying "The lower court dismissed the case as a result of evidentiary rules and likely an incomplete understanding of the documentation of the code in question...." [Monday] VMware rather mysteriously announced: "VMware is pleased with the Feb. 28, 2019 decision of the German appellate court in Hamburg to dismiss Mr. Hellwig's appeal and let stand the regional court's decision to dismiss Mr. Hellwig's lawsuit. "
Karen Sandler, attorney and the Conservancy's executive director, told ZDNet that "We strongly believe that litigation is necessary against willful GPL violators, particularly in cases like VMware where this is strong community consensus that their behavior is wrong. Litigation moves slowly. We will continue to discuss this with Christoph and his lawyers and hope to say more about it in the coming weeks -- after the courts provide their rationale for their decision to the parties (which has not yet occurred)."
Meanwhile, VMware stated that it "continues to be a strong supporter of open source software development," adding that it's been "actively" working on removing vmklinux from vSphere in an upcoming release as part of a multi-year project -- "for reasons unrelated to the litigation."
The German court disagreed in November 2018. Helwig appealed and continued the fight, saying "The lower court dismissed the case as a result of evidentiary rules and likely an incomplete understanding of the documentation of the code in question...." [Monday] VMware rather mysteriously announced: "VMware is pleased with the Feb. 28, 2019 decision of the German appellate court in Hamburg to dismiss Mr. Hellwig's appeal and let stand the regional court's decision to dismiss Mr. Hellwig's lawsuit. "
Karen Sandler, attorney and the Conservancy's executive director, told ZDNet that "We strongly believe that litigation is necessary against willful GPL violators, particularly in cases like VMware where this is strong community consensus that their behavior is wrong. Litigation moves slowly. We will continue to discuss this with Christoph and his lawyers and hope to say more about it in the coming weeks -- after the courts provide their rationale for their decision to the parties (which has not yet occurred)."
Meanwhile, VMware stated that it "continues to be a strong supporter of open source software development," adding that it's been "actively" working on removing vmklinux from vSphere in an upcoming release as part of a multi-year project -- "for reasons unrelated to the litigation."
It might have just been dismissed on a technicality. No point in speculating until the court releases their rationale, especially if you don't know anything about German law (of which I know a grand total of about five sentences worth of knowledge. For example, I know that most if not all of the judges are German).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The court dismissed the case because they do not understand the documentation through evidentiary rules. Fantastic. Not even discovery.
Sue again in a more reasonable country. No one should get away with GPL violations just because the judge does not understand the documentation and isn't willing to learn. This would never happen to a large corporation suing for the same reason. Justice should not be limited based on hoe much money one has.
I don't think they care about freedom at all. They care about control. Whatever originated free software is long gone in place of absolutists who demand control over your work.
Microsoft is contributing to open source. That should tell you how deep this rabbit hole goes.
Why make things open source and call it "free" and then have a million weird strings attached? It's not free. And it sucks anyway.
Then don't use it! Nobody is forcing you or VMware to use open source software.
People make open source software using their precious time and resources. People use "weird strings attached" licenses like the GNU GPL to prevent people from using their work to jump-start closed source software. People use GNU GPL because they hope that the software they developed might be further enhanced by others, without the risk of the software becoming closed source. What's so "weird" about that?
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Congratulations on figuring that out. GNU GPL'd software is free to use, but not free to modify, close source, and call your own. That's the contract, which is (will be) upheld by the law.
What they do is copyright infringement on a commercial scale and that is a pretty serious crime. When an individual downloads a song (non-commercial infringement), they get hit with the whole book and get stomped in the ground. But when a corporation does it, it seems what happens is ... nothing?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Nobody controls how you use it. What is controlled is how you licence it if you publish it and what you must publish alongside if you publish it. That is fundamentally different. As long as you just use it in-house, no restrictions apply.
Also, are you saying that all software licenses are invalid because "no elected government voted on them"?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
i give talks at my university about the damage that so called "free software" has done to the industry and they are always PACKED with people.
Yeah, so was your inauguration, pull the other one, Mr. Trump!
Gpl license isn't law, it's just a made up set of rules that no elected government voted on. Its not worth the paper it's printed on.
By your logic, neither is MS's license, or Oracle's, or Adobe's. So we can just take those them however we want. Let me know how that works for you.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
> GNU GPL'd software is software that has been contributed to the public domain.
Forgive me, please, but _absolutely not_. The phrase "public domain" has very specific meaning with copyrights. The Free Software Foundation does not release software to the public domain precisely to prevent the kind of proprietization and abuse that VMWare is accused of. Please do not misuse the phrase this way, it will confuse someone who's not paid close attention to software copyrights.
I would be interested in seeing that presentation, Iâ(TM)ve had the same concern for many years. Can you message me privately?
... i give talks at my university about the damage that so called "free software" has done to the industry and they are always PACKED with people.
As I remember it the Time Cube(TM?) presentations were relatively popular too, ...
GPL code is copyrighted code and not public domain in any way or form. If it were public domain the GPL wouldn't be needed and couldn't be enforced as the code would be free for all with no limitations attached.
You're confused, it's about freedom for the user, the freedom that comes with having the source code.
If you don't understand the difference between guaranteed freedom (GPL etc.) and free to do what you want with it but possibly take away others' freedom (BSD, MIT, etc.) then you shouldn't even get involved in these discussions.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
More specifically, you don't have to agree to GPL. But if you copy or distribute code without some license from the authors (GPL or otherwise), then you are violating copyright, like any software pirate.
The same is true of MS, Oracle & Adobe. Copying & distributing a work is illegal without some license from the authors granting that permission. Now you have to "click to agree" for MS, Oracle & Adobe because they generally will not grant you a license unless you first agree to surrender other rights that you would otherwise have under the law. (Things like the right modify, reverse engineer, etc).
GPL does not require you to surrender rights or anything else in exchange for the license grant, so authors using GPL are not required to have any explicit agreement. They don't ask for anything of you in exchange for the license and they don't ask you to give up any rights you would otherwise have. You just get the license granting you extra permissions for free. (It seems some people are spiteful because they feel they have the right to demand even more permissions for free. That or they just don't understand the law.)
Just to be clear, you don't even have to give your modifications to the source code the original authors. You just have to give them to anyone you give your compiled code to. In the real world, if your modifications are worth anything, they will find their way back to upstream, but that's not required by GPL.