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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Software Freedom Conservancy has spat out a “high level” update on the GPL enforcement case [theregister.co.uk] it is backing against VMware, ahead of an expected first hearing next year.

SFC said that VMware had filed its defence against the suit brought by German kernel developer Christoph Hellwig back in March, which alleges 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.

VMware has asked for the filings to kept under wraps, but according to the SFC, the virtual giant’s defence “questions Christoph's copyright interest in the Linux kernel and his right to bring this action” and “claims vmklinux is an ‘interoperability module’ which communicates through a stable interface called VMK API.” Which is no particular surprise.

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