Conservancy Sues VMware Over GPL Compliance

[Delgarde]

They may claim (as others have before) that the GPL is invalid and all that, but if it is, then they still don't have a license, thus cannot distribute the code.

That's the best part of the GPL, in my mind. It's a perfect legal hack - the defendant gains nothing from challenging it, because if they succeed, they lose all the rights it granted them... they're back to basic copyright law, with no right to distribute, even if they did provide source.

[Guest]

Good. I hate VMware. Go Conservancy!

Shwoosh, that is the worse possible way to look at the problem at hand.
This isn't about punishing VMware, this is about making them comply with social contract that they agreed with by using GPL software.
You can do whatever you want with it, but if you change something (presumably for better), you are obliged to give it back to community.

It's easy to call them evil, go for hard punishment which will yield $$ in short term,
but in long term VMware might decided to abandon opensource which will hurt _some_ users.
Best outcome here is that VMware pays fair ammount of money to copyright holders and opensource their changes to OSS so whole community can benefit.

There is also a chance that everything they modified is completely useless unles it's used with VMware and opensourcing it wouldn't benefit anybody except few internet freedom warriors.

Quite franky, I don't know neither do I care to properly investigate at this time.

[gnufreex]

Abandoning "open source" will only make them go belly up. So it is great, KVM will rule, no VMware, mission accomplished.

VMware is crappy software, it is slowest and most buggy solution on the market, only way they remain a leader is due to lockin. If they loose this lawsuit, they will eiter have to free the most of their code, or to reengineer their offering, making it even more crappy and uncompatible with Linux. So in any case, VMware will end up weaker after this, which will benefit KVM distributors, in the first place Red Hat.

[prodigy_]

This lawsuit is long overdue I'd say. It's not so much about singling out VMware as it's about sending a message to everyone: GPL is serious. If you don't want to abide by its rules, you're free to use differently licensed code or develop your own solutions from scratch.

[Ramiliez]

This lawsuit is long overdue I'd say. It's not so much about singling out VMware as it's about sending a message to everyone: GPL is serious. If you don't want to abide by its rules, you're free to use differently licensed code or develop your own solutions from scratch.

And that is exactly what we dont want. IMO Staallman should think like this.

As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how make them to open up in the next decade

[gnufreex]

And that is exactly what we dont want. IMO Staallman should think like this.

As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how make them to open up in the next decade

So how are you going to make someone open up? Only GPL is the way.

That quote from Bill Gates about China is useless, because you don't know what he actually means by "we will find a way to make them pay in the next decade". And I know. He means a US-backed coloured revolution in china, break up of the country and then make them pay. But it is not going to happen.

[nils_]

I am sure though that commercial copyright violation in germany can be a costly thing, up to and including jail time. I'm really curious how vmware's defense is going to look like.

It's a civil matter, there is no jail time for that in Germany. Compared to US courts there is also no punitive damages award, only compensatory damages. Which is a bit of a problem in German law, since there is no real monetary compensation if you can't show damages. But they can at least force VMWare to comply with the license or face a fine, but the fine is usually paid to the government or some NGO. You will get reasonable cost of legal defenses compensated though.

[Luke_Wolf]

And that is exactly what we dont want. IMO Staallman should think like this.

As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how make them to open up in the next decade

You're forgetting you're talking to the free software, not the open source camp. They don't care about market share, better code, or long term conversion strategies. Personally I'm going to be quite interested to see how this effects the ecosystem surrounding open source, It's not as if Linux or other GPLed code exists in a vacuum.

[rdnetto]

It's a civil matter, there is no jail time for that in Germany. Compared to US courts there is also no punitive damages award, only compensatory damages. Which is a bit of a problem in German law, since there is no real monetary compensation if you can't show damages. But they can at least force VMWare to comply with the license or face a fine, but the fine is usually paid to the government or some NGO. You will get reasonable cost of legal defenses compensated though.

Could they get an injunction against future violations though? Because an injunction preventing them from selling/distributing their product (until compliant with the license) would hit VMware much harder than any financial settlement.

[gnufreex]

You're forgetting you're talking to the free software, not the open source camp. They don't care about market share, better code, or long term conversion strategies. Personally I'm going to be quite interested to see how this effects the ecosystem surrounding open source, It's not as if Linux or other GPLed code exists in a vacuum.

Not true, Free Software camp cares to have as many Free Software users as possible. But Free Software users is a keyword. Someone using VMware is not Free Software user as VMware doesn't honor the GPL, so particular copy of GPL'd software in VMware ESXi is not really Free Software. So Free Software doesn't lose anything if VMware rewrites infringing code, no Freedom for users either way. On the other hand, VMware loses resources, drivers and backward compatibility, which helps Free Software compete against them. KVM and Xen market share rises, VMware stops being a leader, Free Software wins.