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Distribution: Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, Fedora, Ubuntu
Posts: 13,602
Rep:
VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
Quote:
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.
Hellwig, a key Linux kernel developer and one of the earliest members of Conservancy's GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers, has publicly denounced VMware's misuse of GPL-licensed code since 2007. In 2011, Conservancy discovered that VMware had failed to provide nor offer any source code for the version of BusyBox included in VMware's ESXi products (as required by BusyBox's license, GPLv2). Conservancy began in early 2012 negotiations with VMware to seek compliance on all GPL'd components in the ESXi project. Progress was slow through 2012 and 2013.
Meanwhile, Hellwig joined Conservancy's GPL Compliance for Linux Developers in late 2012. Hellwig assisted Conservancy in analysis of the non-compliant releases of ESXi that VMware provided. After studying these materials over a long period, it became apparent that VMware's current ESXi products infringed many of Hellwig's own copyrights, due to VMware's failure to comply with Linux's license, GPLv2.
During Hellwig's investigations, Conservancy continued to negotiate with VMware. Sadly, VMware's legal counsel finally informed Conservancy in 2014 that VMware had no intention of ceasing their distribution of proprietary-licensed works derived from Hellwig's and other kernel developers' copyrights, despite the terms of GPLv2. Conservancy therefore had no recourse but to support Hellwig's court action.
In addition to other ways VMware has not complied with the requirements of the GPL, 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. Hellwig is an extensive copyright holder in the portions of Linux that VMware misappropriated and used together in a single, new work without permission.
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