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VMware Sued for Ripping Off Linux Kernel Source Code

posted by n1 on Friday March 06 2015, @10:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the lawyers-already-won dept.

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports:

Linux kernel developer Christoph Hellwig has sued VMware in Hamburg, Germany, over alleged violations of the GNU General Public License.

Hellwig's suit, which is backed by New York advocacy group the Software Freedom Conservancy, alleges that VMware's proprietary ESXi hypervisor products use portions of the code that Hellwig wrote for the Linux kernel, in violation of the terms of version 2 of the GPL.

"In addition to other ways VMware has not complied with the requirements of the GPL," the Conservancy wrote in a blog post on Wednesday, "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."

This isn't the first time Hellwig has made such claims. He first accused VMware of violating the GPL in 2006 via the Linux Kernel Mailing List, even threatening to sue. It now seems that the proverbial other shoe has finally dropped.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday March 09 2015, @09:11AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Monday March 09 2015, @09:11AM (#154795) Journal
    There was nothing in the GPL that stopped Google from taking the Linux kernel, modifying it, and running it on their datacentres without upstreaming the changes. Given that 90% of software development happens in house and is never redistributed, the number of people that you're forcing to release changes with the GPL is pretty small. The number that you're frightening away from ever looking at it with a license that's several pages of legalese is much larger.
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