1) As an editor he HAD to push Microsoft products for the ad revenue. When he couldn't any longer, they dumped him.
2) Same as the above, except pushing crap products finally got to him and he quit.
Wonder how many other well-known PC zine employees are getting fed up with being forced to push Microsoft's shit when they know it isn't worth the bandwidth bits or CD pits it came on.
I've spent the entire day trying to find out why Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 on one of my client's machines hangs at random points while rendering. And they constantly have problems with Adobe Premiere crashes when doing video and film conversion projects.
It's ridiculous. Now I'm doing a defrag and if that doesn't help, we have to uninstall every frickin' application on the box to see what might be interfering. If that doesn't work, it's reinstall the whole goddamn box - which will take another day, given that we have to put that QuickBooks crap on the box which is more bloated shit.
Adobe software is unmitigated SHIT. Anybody who'd buy an office suite from them deserves to.
And don't even get me started on their (or Macrovision's) fucked up license management software that dumps randomly-named services in your Services list, triggering Windows Defender messages to the Event Log suggesting "spyware".
Adobe is like every other stupid-ass application company in existence today - selling "featuritis" software loaded with crap nobody wants that doesn't work and makes you jump through hoops to use it, while charging you an arm and a leg for this shit. Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, Microsoft, HP and their 750MB of printer software - all a bunch of fucking morons who need to be put out of business so people with computers can get some fucking work done rather than debugging their shit all day.
The OP was using examples of all the console OS stuff - that was NOT the issue that I saw mentioned in the original article.
According to the original article as I read it, NONE of the console OS stuff was relevant to whether the VMWare kernel was a "derived work". The entire argument was the bootloading process and/or how the VMWare kernel was "shimmed" into the Red Hat Linux system. In any event, the source code for the Red Hat Linux was available, so the entire issue was whether the VMWare kernel was a "derived work" and the only argument I saw in the original article was about the bootloading part and the "binary blob" business.
I did not see anything about the console OS part being at issue. Drivers, yes, but that was being argued here, not in the original article as I recall. Hellwig's argument on the kernel mailing list might have been about that, but the article was not addressing that directly, as I recall.
Then why do I hear arguments every other day about whether to include binary-only proprietary drivers? By definition, they couldn't be if they weren't GPL according to your argument.
I did read the article, but the fucking argument was so convoluted - and then confused by the comments here as to what was really meant - that it took me an hour to figure it out - and I'm still called wrong by everybody.
Fuck it, it's all bullshit. Who gives a shit except some asshole named Hellwig?
Christ, I'm starting to get sick of this license horseshit. Public domain every fucking thing and everybody including Linus STFU and get back to coding.
No, I didn't make anything up. Perhaps I misread the article.
In other words, the concept seems to be:
1) Since the VMWare kernel is booted from a Linux kernel, it is a derived work.
2) Therefore the VMWare kernel source should be available.
But that's not how I read the article. The article - or perhaps it was someone else's comment here - seemed to say that the source to the Linux kernel was not available AND the source to the VMWare kernel was not available.
"The vmkernel would be considered derived unless it has been ported from another Operating System (proving it does no requite Linux to function). VMware could prove this without giving away the code."
I thought that was already known - that the VMWare kernel was ported from the OS used during development of it. I know I read it somewhere, perhaps in a quoted portion of the VMWare FAQ.
In any event, if the article is saying that just because the vkmod is loaded from insmod, that that makes it a derived work, well, I don't think that flies. And if the source for everything BUT the vmkernel is available, the article's argument is a lot weaker than I originally thought, as a consequence.
Not to mention that I said nothing about the RIAA at all.
Not to mention that I know perfectly well what the FUCKING GPL SAYS! So you condescending little description of it was a complete FUCKING waste of my time.
I only own maybe two CDs - one Kate Bush, one from the Corrs. Only got them because they were sold cheap on a college campus.
Everything else I listen to is downloaded MP3s or video. I don't even listen to the radio. Very rarely I listen to streaming Internet music and record some of it.
Most of my listening prior to now was over cheap AM/FM cassette radios from which I recorded the broadcast music and listened to it with cheap headphones.
So what do I know about "high fidelity"? I don't own a $6,000 Harmon-Kardon system. People who do maybe got a right to complain. So? Fuck 'em. Most of the world doesn't own such a system either.
When Internet bandwidth gets higher and disk space cheaper, MAYBE we'll all be listening to high quality lossless music directly downloaded from lossless copies of the original masters.
And maybe not - since MP3's are "good enough" for the ninety-eight percent of the world who aren't "audiophiles".
People make the "good enough" argument for Windows, why not for MP3s?
Clearly you missed my entire point and argument. Not surprising.
It was inevitable given your complacent notion that you understand everything and nobody else understands anything.
Hence your condescending tone.
Go back and reread my post, then STFU.
The fact that the license can be ignored - if you don't want the product at all - as can any license is irrelevant to my point, which is that one uses a license to compel behavior. This is, compared to true freedom, coercion. It's that simple. You either compel behavior or you do not. (You CAN compel behavior by using rewards - this is NOT coercion. Many contracts provide for rewards to "compel" behavior.) A "copyleft" license is LESS coercive than a copyright license, but it is still coercive. In fact, a (weak) case could be made that a copyleft license is MORE coercive. At least a copyright license merely forbids you to do something (redistribution). A copyleft license REQUIRES you to do something - at least if you do redistribute the product.
In other words, a copyleft license TREATED AS A CONTRACT is not coercive in the same sense as a LAW such as copyright is. But it is enforced by law by the state, which makes it indistinguishable from a copyright license. That makes it coercive.
The fact that contracts are enforced by law by the state does not make them coercive in the same sense, because such contracts could be engaged in by a society without a state, using reputation or contract details that use rewards for contract compliance or even personal force to enforce them. The latter would be coercive, but could be argued to be self-defense.
In other words, a contract is an agreement, nothing more. How one deals with the problem of a broken agreement determines whether the contract and the means to deal with a broken contract are coercive or not.
In that respect, copyleft is no different from copyright - which was the original posters point, I believe.
Your kindergarten explanation of the supposed "difference" notwithstanding...
They'll probably hire an Israeli company to do it.
And Israelis have already been caught selling CALEA wiretap info to organized crime in LA in one case. According to Carl Cameron at Fox News (normally not the sort of place I'd go for news, but in this case...), departments in the FBI were highly upset that Israeli companies had excessive access to the software and systems running CALEA wiretaps.
Israel has learned that the best way to spy on the world is to be the country who supplies the world with spying equipment.
Everybody knows from previous IT industry articles that pretty much nobody cared about the SCO suit once it was clear that it was going nowhere. Almost no companies said it had any impact on their Linux provisioning considerations.
This is highly unlikely to have any effect on anybody - even Novell, much less IBM or Red Hat.
Well, given that Microsoft never says anything but lies, we can assume the device was functioning perfectly when it failed the tests. (Is that a weird sentence or what?)
However, what is amusing is that Microsoft will lie ABOUT THEIR OWN PRODUCTS FAILING A TEST JUST TO BE LYING! I mean, if you were trying to win somebody over, would you admit the product you sent for the test was screwed up? Like it gives somebody confidence in the product maybe actually working if it WASN'T screwed up?
These guys couldn't tell the truth if they were PAID TO!
Nonsense. Provide evidence. Novell is still more than viable, and I've heard nothing about either Linspire or Xandros "dying". I don't expect the latter two companies to ever be all that hot in the Linux marketplace over time, but that's a far cry from "going out of business next week" which is pretty much where SCO was before they got their cash infusion from the investors Microsoft suborned.
Last I heard last year, Xandros has increased its revenues steadily since it was founded and is "experiencing and projecting 400% year-to-year growth."
As for Linspire, as of last year, according to an article I quote:
"So far Linspire hasn't made a profit, but the company is "very close," said Larry Kettler, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing. "We lost around $10 million per year in previous years, and now we're just about at break-even."
Doesn't sound to me like these companies are so desperate to go out of business that they would become Microsoft tools.
It's nonsense. If you keep arguing for it, it just makes you sound like a Microsoft shill trying to break up the Linux community.
Supposedly they are using Linux drivers (some people say otherwise) - but that is not relevant to the issue since external drivers do not have to be under the GPL. The issue here is whether the Linux kernel used to boot the VMWare kernel makes the VMWare kernel a "derived work." I don't agree, but that's the issue here, not whether the "console OS" (which is Red Hat) is using Linux or even whether the VMWare kernel is using Linux drivers.
The console OS is not at issue here. What is at issue is the relationship between the Linux kernel used to boot the VMWare kernel and the VMWare kernel itself. The author of TFA believes that just because a Linux kernel is used to boot the VMWare kernel, this makes the VMWare kernel a "derived work."
I disagree for reasons stated elsewhere. But the console OS is not the problem. That Linux kernel is running on top of the VMWare kernel (or otherwise "shimmed" in, I don't know the details of how and it's not relevant to the discussion.)
"If you want, you can get complete source code for this bastarized 2.4 series kernel which contains no proprietary code and doesn't link with proprietary code."
well, what is at issue here is whether the mere fact that a Linux kernel is used to boot the VMWare kernel makes the VMWare kernel a "derived work". I say this makes little sense.
Apparently the argument goes as follows:
1) A Linux kernel is used to boot the VMWare kernel.
2) This makes the VMWare kernel a "derived work."
3) The Linux kernel source used to boot the VMWare kernel is not available.
4) Therefore we can't tell if the VMWare kernel is a "derived work" or not.
5) And if the Linux kernel source for the kernel used to boot the VMWare kernel is not available, it's a violation of the GPL on its own.
The argument is circular to me in this form. But if the Linux kernel source used to boot the VMWare kernel IS available, then the argument falls flat - certainly as to point 5.
The only remaining argument is whether the mere fact of using a Linux kernel to boot a VMWare kernel makes the VMWare kernel a "derived work" to which source code must be made available under the GPL.
I say that's a seriously stupid argument to make. If any other means of bootloading the VMWare kernel could be used, and the Linux kernel was only chosen for convenience sake and/or historical reasons (if it was used during development when porting from the original OS), then it would be reaching to call the VMWare kernel a "derived work" as the VMWare kernel does not depend on Linux and ONLY Linux to be usable.
The "top" portions of VMWare that use Red Hat are not the issue here at all. It's the relationship between the kernel used to boot the VMWare kernel and the VMWare kernel.
I suspect you're correct that this is some "infoterrorism" intended to affect the VMWare stock price - or perhaps some overzealous FSF fanaticism ("overzealous" being redundant here.)
"It explicitly releases the work from copyright restrictions on the sole condition that the same rights are passed on to derivative works."
"Copyleft" is just a word. The end result is a LICENSE which requires the user to alter his behavior to coincide with the terms of the license. This is exactly the same as copyright. It is enforceable in the courts. That a "copyleft" license allows redistribution whereas a "copyright" does not is really not relevant to the underlying point the original poster was making - if you allow people to use copyleft to coerce the behavior you desire, you can't complain about people using copyright to coerce the behavior they desire.
This is the fundamental flaw with ALL "intellectual property". It is coercive by definition.
This doesn't mean you can't have "contracts" (which a license is). There is, however, a difference between a freely negotiated contract for a performance which relies on mutual behavior provisions or reputation effects or actual force to be enforced, and an "imposed" contract on a product not based on negotiation which relies on legal enforcement.
The latter is a coercive attempt to control a person's behavior in exchange for use of a product and is fundamentally not "freedom" in any sense.
"It definitely REQUIRES Linux to function. I dont understand how they claim it runs "directly on the hardware". It's a lie or it's a poor use of buzzwords."
Recheck yourself. That it uses Red Hat Linux for most of the upper level functions is not the issue. The issue here is whether the fact that a Linux kernel is used as a bootloader makes the proprietary VMWare kernel a "derived work". Their proprietary kernel runs directly on the hardware to manage the hardware for the VM. All your examples are higher level functions unrelated to that which run on Red Hat. That is not the issue here.
Well, on point 2, I get his analogy. Linux is being used AS a bootloader - in other words, vkmod is being loaded by insmod. Beyond that, the higher level Red Hat Linux is only being used for the VMWare console. That is not at issue here.
The issue is the use of a Linux kernel AS a bootloader without supplying the source to that kernel - which is really stupid since who the hell cares whether that source is available? It's nothing but a fucking boot loader in this case! And an OLD Linux kernel as well! Saying that that makes the entire VMWare VM a "derived work" is just stupid - VMWare could easily write their own bootloader, they have more than enough smarts and money to do so.
So if they did that, and it became a legal requirement for everyone else, what benefit would Linux accrue? It would just no longer be used. And nobody else would use it for that reason, either. Which means Linux would end up NOT BEING USED by a class of developers who otherwise would use it. And for no benefit to Linux, we get technical legal correctness!
In my view, this is why the whole GPL concept is flawed - political correctness by license. Which ends up being used by people to coerce other people into doing things THEIR way. This is the fundamental flaw in the entire concept of intellectual property.
In my view, a "derived work" should not be decided on just whether the top layer of system software (not application software) happens to require a Linux kernel underneath it IF the top layer COULD be easily ported to another OS. If the top layer actually MUST have a Linux kernel and nothing BUT a Linux kernel underneath it, then maybe you can say it is a derived work.
I mean, VMWare has its OWN kernel. Linux is just BOOTING that proprietary kernel. Period. The article is making some complicated argument based on some comments from Linus that is then considered the definitive LEGAL definition of a "derived work".
Makes no sense because who the hell cares? This isn't going to set some legal precedent that is going to ruin Linux as a GPL product or enable Microsoft to take over the world.
I read the article and as far as I can see, while there may be a technical legal issue with the VMWare kernel being loaded by a Linux kernel (or some part thereof - insmod), thereby in some extremely technical sense making the VMWare kernel a "derived work" - this is really reaching in my opinion.
Particularly since it would seem obvious that that they could easily rewrite the thing to do its bootloading in some other way. The Linux kernel appears to be have been used only as a convenience to make the system more portable than their original development OS. And this was probably done "back in the day" since they're using a 2.4 kernel.
And if said Linux kernel being used is described as a "badly hacked 2.4 kernel", then who the hell cares? Hellwig seems to be pissed that VMWare asked the kernel maintenance list for some support or something, but basically seems to be on a "crusade" like the FSF fanatics. He's all pissed off about something that nobody else in their right mind couldn't care less about.
Perhaps VMWare should rewrite their boot loader (they certainly have enough money and smarts to do so), but basically I agree with the first poster - this appears to be either FSF fanaticism or an attempt to influence the VMWare IPO or both.
It's really beginning to seem like a religious crusade for some "fundamentalists" to root out "heretics" in the OSS world. The same socialists who deride proprietary companies for preventing "freedom" are more than willing to use a state-enforced license to drag people into line with their ideology. This is not "freedom". It is coercion.
That's right - MS has ALREADY TRANSFERRED THE FUNDS - which those companies can now use as they please without doing anything Microsoft asks of them outside of the specific contract they signed for interoperability.
What part of that don't you understand? There's nothing Microsoft can do to them unless Microsoft sues them. Therefore they have absolutely ZERO incentive to do anything for Microsoft, especially as if they did, they would go out of business. All three companies have viable - if not guaranteed - business models based on Linux. They are not in any danger of going out of business like SCO was. So why would they threaten their existence as a business for the relatively small amount of money Microsoft has provided them?
It makes no sense. The SCO case was utterly different. Different people. Different business model. Different financial condition.
"It's a case of do-or-don't-make-as-much-money-even-though-you-hav e-no-competition."
Yup - and anybody who has ever read anything about Bill Gates knows that his entire life is devoted to sucking every last dime out of every last pocket there is (except his own, of course - maybe.)
Even if it ends up with him not making any money (and eventually it will, of course) - he'll STILL do it!
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This means one or both of the following:
1) As an editor he HAD to push Microsoft products for the ad revenue. When he couldn't any longer, they dumped him.
2) Same as the above, except pushing crap products finally got to him and he quit.
Wonder how many other well-known PC zine employees are getting fed up with being forced to push Microsoft's shit when they know it isn't worth the bandwidth bits or CD pits it came on.
I've spent the entire day trying to find out why Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 on one of my client's machines hangs at random points while rendering. And they constantly have problems with Adobe Premiere crashes when doing video and film conversion projects.
It's ridiculous. Now I'm doing a defrag and if that doesn't help, we have to uninstall every frickin' application on the box to see what might be interfering. If that doesn't work, it's reinstall the whole goddamn box - which will take another day, given that we have to put that QuickBooks crap on the box which is more bloated shit.
Adobe software is unmitigated SHIT. Anybody who'd buy an office suite from them deserves to.
And don't even get me started on their (or Macrovision's) fucked up license management software that dumps randomly-named services in your Services list, triggering Windows Defender messages to the Event Log suggesting "spyware".
Adobe is like every other stupid-ass application company in existence today - selling "featuritis" software loaded with crap nobody wants that doesn't work and makes you jump through hoops to use it, while charging you an arm and a leg for this shit. Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, Microsoft, HP and their 750MB of printer software - all a bunch of fucking morons who need to be put out of business so people with computers can get some fucking work done rather than debugging their shit all day.
Can you tell I'm slightly irritated?
Adobe - that's what their brains are made of.
A LOT of crap "falls through the cracks" with those people.
Which is why I'm running openSUSE 10.2 now.
Not QUITE as much crap falls through the cracks with Novell.
I'll use whatever the bloody fuck I want and to hell with the fucking license.
I'm not anybody who is likely to be writing "derived code" so I don't give a shit.
I tried to make sense of the stupid shit in the original article and every post on that article - including yours.
You're no fucking different from anybody else in this thread. You post whatever you THINK is the facts, same as me.
Adios, man.
Fine, whatever, make the fucking VMWare kernel open source.
They just got worth a few billion dollars.
Good luck.
The OP was using examples of all the console OS stuff - that was NOT the issue that I saw mentioned in the original article.
According to the original article as I read it, NONE of the console OS stuff was relevant to whether the VMWare kernel was a "derived work". The entire argument was the bootloading process and/or how the VMWare kernel was "shimmed" into the Red Hat Linux system. In any event, the source code for the Red Hat Linux was available, so the entire issue was whether the VMWare kernel was a "derived work" and the only argument I saw in the original article was about the bootloading part and the "binary blob" business.
I did not see anything about the console OS part being at issue. Drivers, yes, but that was being argued here, not in the original article as I recall. Hellwig's argument on the kernel mailing list might have been about that, but the article was not addressing that directly, as I recall.
"Linux drivers do have be GPLed"
Then why do I hear arguments every other day about whether to include binary-only proprietary drivers? By definition, they couldn't be if they weren't GPL according to your argument.
I did read the article, but the fucking argument was so convoluted - and then confused by the comments here as to what was really meant - that it took me an hour to figure it out - and I'm still called wrong by everybody.
Fuck it, it's all bullshit. Who gives a shit except some asshole named Hellwig?
Christ, I'm starting to get sick of this license horseshit. Public domain every fucking thing and everybody including Linus STFU and get back to coding.
No, I didn't make anything up. Perhaps I misread the article.
In other words, the concept seems to be:
1) Since the VMWare kernel is booted from a Linux kernel, it is a derived work.
2) Therefore the VMWare kernel source should be available.
But that's not how I read the article. The article - or perhaps it was someone else's comment here - seemed to say that the source to the Linux kernel was not available AND the source to the VMWare kernel was not available.
"The vmkernel would be considered derived unless it has been ported from another Operating System (proving it does no requite Linux to function). VMware could prove this without giving away the code."
I thought that was already known - that the VMWare kernel was ported from the OS used during development of it. I know I read it somewhere, perhaps in a quoted portion of the VMWare FAQ.
In any event, if the article is saying that just because the vkmod is loaded from insmod, that that makes it a derived work, well, I don't think that flies. And if the source for everything BUT the vmkernel is available, the article's argument is a lot weaker than I originally thought, as a consequence.
Sigh...
You still don't get it.
I'm wasting my time with you.
Not to mention that I said nothing about the RIAA at all.
Not to mention that I know perfectly well what the FUCKING GPL SAYS! So you condescending little description of it was a complete FUCKING waste of my time.
I only own maybe two CDs - one Kate Bush, one from the Corrs. Only got them because they were sold cheap on a college campus.
Everything else I listen to is downloaded MP3s or video. I don't even listen to the radio. Very rarely I listen to streaming Internet music and record some of it.
Most of my listening prior to now was over cheap AM/FM cassette radios from which I recorded the broadcast music and listened to it with cheap headphones.
So what do I know about "high fidelity"? I don't own a $6,000 Harmon-Kardon system. People who do maybe got a right to complain. So? Fuck 'em. Most of the world doesn't own such a system either.
When Internet bandwidth gets higher and disk space cheaper, MAYBE we'll all be listening to high quality lossless music directly downloaded from lossless copies of the original masters.
And maybe not - since MP3's are "good enough" for the ninety-eight percent of the world who aren't "audiophiles".
People make the "good enough" argument for Windows, why not for MP3s?
Clearly you missed my entire point and argument. Not surprising.
It was inevitable given your complacent notion that you understand everything and nobody else understands anything.
Hence your condescending tone.
Go back and reread my post, then STFU.
The fact that the license can be ignored - if you don't want the product at all - as can any license is irrelevant to my point, which is that one uses a license to compel behavior. This is, compared to true freedom, coercion. It's that simple. You either compel behavior or you do not. (You CAN compel behavior by using rewards - this is NOT coercion. Many contracts provide for rewards to "compel" behavior.) A "copyleft" license is LESS coercive than a copyright license, but it is still coercive. In fact, a (weak) case could be made that a copyleft license is MORE coercive. At least a copyright license merely forbids you to do something (redistribution). A copyleft license REQUIRES you to do something - at least if you do redistribute the product.
In other words, a copyleft license TREATED AS A CONTRACT is not coercive in the same sense as a LAW such as copyright is. But it is enforced by law by the state, which makes it indistinguishable from a copyright license. That makes it coercive.
The fact that contracts are enforced by law by the state does not make them coercive in the same sense, because such contracts could be engaged in by a society without a state, using reputation or contract details that use rewards for contract compliance or even personal force to enforce them. The latter would be coercive, but could be argued to be self-defense.
In other words, a contract is an agreement, nothing more. How one deals with the problem of a broken agreement determines whether the contract and the means to deal with a broken contract are coercive or not.
In that respect, copyleft is no different from copyright - which was the original posters point, I believe.
Your kindergarten explanation of the supposed "difference" notwithstanding...
They'll probably hire an Israeli company to do it.
And Israelis have already been caught selling CALEA wiretap info to organized crime in LA in one case. According to Carl Cameron at Fox News (normally not the sort of place I'd go for news, but in this case...), departments in the FBI were highly upset that Israeli companies had excessive access to the software and systems running CALEA wiretaps.
Israel has learned that the best way to spy on the world is to be the country who supplies the world with spying equipment.
Everybody knows from previous IT industry articles that pretty much nobody cared about the SCO suit once it was clear that it was going nowhere. Almost no companies said it had any impact on their Linux provisioning considerations.
This is highly unlikely to have any effect on anybody - even Novell, much less IBM or Red Hat.
Well, given that Microsoft never says anything but lies, we can assume the device was functioning perfectly when it failed the tests. (Is that a weird sentence or what?)
However, what is amusing is that Microsoft will lie ABOUT THEIR OWN PRODUCTS FAILING A TEST JUST TO BE LYING! I mean, if you were trying to win somebody over, would you admit the product you sent for the test was screwed up? Like it gives somebody confidence in the product maybe actually working if it WASN'T screwed up?
These guys couldn't tell the truth if they were PAID TO!
"These corporations are dying already".
Nonsense. Provide evidence. Novell is still more than viable, and I've heard nothing about either Linspire or Xandros "dying". I don't expect the latter two companies to ever be all that hot in the Linux marketplace over time, but that's a far cry from "going out of business next week" which is pretty much where SCO was before they got their cash infusion from the investors Microsoft suborned.
Last I heard last year, Xandros has increased its revenues steadily since it was founded and is "experiencing and projecting 400% year-to-year growth."
As for Linspire, as of last year, according to an article I quote:
"So far Linspire hasn't made a profit, but the company is "very close," said Larry Kettler, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing. "We lost around $10 million per year in previous years, and now we're just about at break-even."
Doesn't sound to me like these companies are so desperate to go out of business that they would become Microsoft tools.
It's nonsense. If you keep arguing for it, it just makes you sound like a Microsoft shill trying to break up the Linux community.
Supposedly they are using Linux drivers (some people say otherwise) - but that is not relevant to the issue since external drivers do not have to be under the GPL. The issue here is whether the Linux kernel used to boot the VMWare kernel makes the VMWare kernel a "derived work." I don't agree, but that's the issue here, not whether the "console OS" (which is Red Hat) is using Linux or even whether the VMWare kernel is using Linux drivers.
The console OS is not at issue here. What is at issue is the relationship between the Linux kernel used to boot the VMWare kernel and the VMWare kernel itself. The author of TFA believes that just because a Linux kernel is used to boot the VMWare kernel, this makes the VMWare kernel a "derived work."
I disagree for reasons stated elsewhere. But the console OS is not the problem. That Linux kernel is running on top of the VMWare kernel (or otherwise "shimmed" in, I don't know the details of how and it's not relevant to the discussion.)
"If you want, you can get complete source code for this bastarized 2.4 series kernel which contains no proprietary code and doesn't link with proprietary code."
well, what is at issue here is whether the mere fact that a Linux kernel is used to boot the VMWare kernel makes the VMWare kernel a "derived work". I say this makes little sense.
Apparently the argument goes as follows:
1) A Linux kernel is used to boot the VMWare kernel.
2) This makes the VMWare kernel a "derived work."
3) The Linux kernel source used to boot the VMWare kernel is not available.
4) Therefore we can't tell if the VMWare kernel is a "derived work" or not.
5) And if the Linux kernel source for the kernel used to boot the VMWare kernel is not available, it's a violation of the GPL on its own.
The argument is circular to me in this form. But if the Linux kernel source used to boot the VMWare kernel IS available, then the argument falls flat - certainly as to point 5.
The only remaining argument is whether the mere fact of using a Linux kernel to boot a VMWare kernel makes the VMWare kernel a "derived work" to which source code must be made available under the GPL.
I say that's a seriously stupid argument to make. If any other means of bootloading the VMWare kernel could be used, and the Linux kernel was only chosen for convenience sake and/or historical reasons (if it was used during development when porting from the original OS), then it would be reaching to call the VMWare kernel a "derived work" as the VMWare kernel does not depend on Linux and ONLY Linux to be usable.
The "top" portions of VMWare that use Red Hat are not the issue here at all. It's the relationship between the kernel used to boot the VMWare kernel and the VMWare kernel.
I suspect you're correct that this is some "infoterrorism" intended to affect the VMWare stock price - or perhaps some overzealous FSF fanaticism ("overzealous" being redundant here.)
Not to nitpick...well, yes, to nitpick:
"It explicitly releases the work from copyright restrictions on the sole condition that the same rights are passed on to derivative works."
"Copyleft" is just a word. The end result is a LICENSE which requires the user to alter his behavior to coincide with the terms of the license. This is exactly the same as copyright. It is enforceable in the courts. That a "copyleft" license allows redistribution whereas a "copyright" does not is really not relevant to the underlying point the original poster was making - if you allow people to use copyleft to coerce the behavior you desire, you can't complain about people using copyright to coerce the behavior they desire.
This is the fundamental flaw with ALL "intellectual property". It is coercive by definition.
This doesn't mean you can't have "contracts" (which a license is). There is, however, a difference between a freely negotiated contract for a performance which relies on mutual behavior provisions or reputation effects or actual force to be enforced, and an "imposed" contract on a product not based on negotiation which relies on legal enforcement.
The latter is a coercive attempt to control a person's behavior in exchange for use of a product and is fundamentally not "freedom" in any sense.
"It definitely REQUIRES Linux to function. I dont understand how they claim it runs "directly on the hardware". It's a lie or it's a poor use of buzzwords."
Recheck yourself. That it uses Red Hat Linux for most of the upper level functions is not the issue. The issue here is whether the fact that a Linux kernel is used as a bootloader makes the proprietary VMWare kernel a "derived work". Their proprietary kernel runs directly on the hardware to manage the hardware for the VM. All your examples are higher level functions unrelated to that which run on Red Hat. That is not the issue here.
Well, on point 2, I get his analogy. Linux is being used AS a bootloader - in other words, vkmod is being loaded by insmod. Beyond that, the higher level Red Hat Linux is only being used for the VMWare console. That is not at issue here.
The issue is the use of a Linux kernel AS a bootloader without supplying the source to that kernel - which is really stupid since who the hell cares whether that source is available? It's nothing but a fucking boot loader in this case! And an OLD Linux kernel as well! Saying that that makes the entire VMWare VM a "derived work" is just stupid - VMWare could easily write their own bootloader, they have more than enough smarts and money to do so.
So if they did that, and it became a legal requirement for everyone else, what benefit would Linux accrue? It would just no longer be used. And nobody else would use it for that reason, either. Which means Linux would end up NOT BEING USED by a class of developers who otherwise would use it. And for no benefit to Linux, we get technical legal correctness!
In my view, this is why the whole GPL concept is flawed - political correctness by license. Which ends up being used by people to coerce other people into doing things THEIR way. This is the fundamental flaw in the entire concept of intellectual property.
In my view, a "derived work" should not be decided on just whether the top layer of system software (not application software) happens to require a Linux kernel underneath it IF the top layer COULD be easily ported to another OS. If the top layer actually MUST have a Linux kernel and nothing BUT a Linux kernel underneath it, then maybe you can say it is a derived work.
I mean, VMWare has its OWN kernel. Linux is just BOOTING that proprietary kernel. Period. The article is making some complicated argument based on some comments from Linus that is then considered the definitive LEGAL definition of a "derived work".
Makes no sense because who the hell cares? This isn't going to set some legal precedent that is going to ruin Linux as a GPL product or enable Microsoft to take over the world.
I read the article and as far as I can see, while there may be a technical legal issue with the VMWare kernel being loaded by a Linux kernel (or some part thereof - insmod), thereby in some extremely technical sense making the VMWare kernel a "derived work" - this is really reaching in my opinion.
Particularly since it would seem obvious that that they could easily rewrite the thing to do its bootloading in some other way. The Linux kernel appears to be have been used only as a convenience to make the system more portable than their original development OS. And this was probably done "back in the day" since they're using a 2.4 kernel.
And if said Linux kernel being used is described as a "badly hacked 2.4 kernel", then who the hell cares? Hellwig seems to be pissed that VMWare asked the kernel maintenance list for some support or something, but basically seems to be on a "crusade" like the FSF fanatics. He's all pissed off about something that nobody else in their right mind couldn't care less about.
Perhaps VMWare should rewrite their boot loader (they certainly have enough money and smarts to do so), but basically I agree with the first poster - this appears to be either FSF fanaticism or an attempt to influence the VMWare IPO or both.
It's really beginning to seem like a religious crusade for some "fundamentalists" to root out "heretics" in the OSS world. The same socialists who deride proprietary companies for preventing "freedom" are more than willing to use a state-enforced license to drag people into line with their ideology. This is not "freedom". It is coercion.
That's right - MS has ALREADY TRANSFERRED THE FUNDS - which those companies can now use as they please without doing anything Microsoft asks of them outside of the specific contract they signed for interoperability.
What part of that don't you understand? There's nothing Microsoft can do to them unless Microsoft sues them. Therefore they have absolutely ZERO incentive to do anything for Microsoft, especially as if they did, they would go out of business. All three companies have viable - if not guaranteed - business models based on Linux. They are not in any danger of going out of business like SCO was. So why would they threaten their existence as a business for the relatively small amount of money Microsoft has provided them?
It makes no sense. The SCO case was utterly different. Different people. Different business model. Different financial condition.
It's tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
"It's a case of do-or-don't-make-as-much-money-even-though-you-hav e-no-competition."
Yup - and anybody who has ever read anything about Bill Gates knows that his entire life is devoted to sucking every last dime out of every last pocket there is (except his own, of course - maybe.)
Even if it ends up with him not making any money (and eventually it will, of course) - he'll STILL do it!
That's TRUE greed!
Why isn't this modded as "Funny"?
Helloooo!