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VMware May Violate Linux Copyrights
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Aug 14, 2007 12:34 PM
from the what-about-its-copylefts dept.
from the what-about-its-copylefts dept.
Nailer writes "Bloomberg believe VMware's IPO today may the largest technology offering since Google. But doubts have been cast over the company's supposedly proprietary ESX product, as top 10 Linux contributor Christopher Hellwig claims the software may violate Linux kernel copyrights. 'Is Hellwig right, and is VMware a derived product of Linux? Unless vmkernel can be loaded without the Linux kernel, it would appear so. VMware was developed from another, long ago OS created as a research project, but it's unclear whether vmkernel was ported from that OS or rewritten as the Linux-requiring binary blob. What's more of an issue is that VMware had these serious questions posed directly to them a year ago, repeated in a public forum many times since, but have yet to respond at all.'"
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They made a movie about this with Charlie Sheen (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They made a movie about this with Charlie Sheen (Score:5, Funny)
?????
Parent
Re:They made a movie about this with Charlie Sheen (Score:5, Insightful)
- Omit actual details in favor of baseless speculation.
This is how you optimize FUD: keep the claims mysterious. SCO kept up this strategy for, what, 4 or 5 years?Parent
Re:They made a movie about this with Charlie Sheen (Score:5, Informative)
What details were omitted from TFA, in your opinion?
Parent
Re:Help me understand... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Help me understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
Derived from Linux source code = Have to show the code
Running on Linux = whatever you want to do
Derived from linux concepts (commands, interfaces, etc) or using linux API's = whatever you want to do
Please don't spread rediculous misconceptions about what the GPL forces to be free, it hurts the GPL movement because people will avoid it for fear its will "infect" their code, I had to get our lawyers sign off that checking our proprietary code into the GPL'd CVS would not force our code to be GPL; arguements that using Open Office make your term paper GPL or that somehow the ability to run Halo under WINE means you have a right to the source code is the type of anti-GNU FUD MS wants to spread.
Parent
Re:Help me understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are talking about the kernel, then you should read the COPYING [kernel.org] file: if your work is a derived work of the Linux kernel, then it must be released under the GPL. If it is not a derived work of the kernel then you can do whatever you want.
If you are talking about one of the many platforms based on Linux (e.g., RHEL, Debian GNU/Linux, etc) then you must consider the licensing terms of every work which you derive from (e.g., the GNU C Library, GTK+).
BTW, I must correct your implied assertion that the free software community wants "ownership" of a vendor's code. This is not the case! We merely want vendors to respect the licensing terms of any works from which they create a derivative work.
Parent
Re:Help me understand... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Help me understand... (Score:4, Insightful)
FSF did not distribute SunOS, Solaris, HP/UX etc. and therefore they were not bound by those licenses. The same applies to say NVIDIA, since they don't distribute GPL-covered software either. VMWare has no such luck -- they distribute both GPL-covered and proprietary software, and they even do it on the same CD. Now, the GPL could have outright forbidden this "mere aggregation", which would obviously have been completely enforceable. Instead, the GPL allows shipping both on the same media -- but only if both pieces work independently of each other. And the VMWare hypervisor seems to not work without the Linux kernel. Whoops.
Parent
Re:Help me understand... (Score:4, Insightful)
Incorrect. You *cannot* link a GPL library into a non-gpl app. Check with your lawyers. Seriously..
Parent
Incorrect wording in title (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Incorrect wording in title (Score:5, Funny)
Copyright gets extended, we all get violated.
Cheers
Parent
Adds to Perception of GPL as Viral (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Adds to Perception of GPL as Viral (Score:5, Interesting)
Before you all massacre me: I see your real point, that they will fear using Linux as a base operating system for their products, even when that usage wouldn't cause their code to fall under GPL. But should that stop people from protecting their IP? Contributors to the Linux kernel and other GPL products have issued an exclusive license under which their copyrighted material should be released. Allowing corporations to desecrate this for the lofty goal of popularizing Linux doesn't make sense. GPL is what it is, and if it doesn't become any more popular because of it's "viral" nature or even perception of such, so be it. Otherwise you will just be destroying the authors goals - to keep the software free and open at all costs.
Bottom line is, if it adds to the negative perception of GPL, it's worth advertising the positive, but certainly *not* worth dismissing the issue. Stand by the GPL principals, or don't use them in the first place.
Parent
Re:Adds to Perception of GPL as Viral (Score:4, Insightful)
See, whether or not it's "viral" and whether you get to use Linux and other GPL software "in your products" depend entirely on what kind of software it is and what you're doing with it.
If you merely took Linux code (which is copyrighted) and incorporated it into your product, you've just swiped code -- which, oddly enough, is illegal under the law and the not provided for in the license. If it was LGPL and you can link to it, then you can make it as part of your product since it is just plumbing.
Nobody is saying you can't write your own closed-source application which runs on top of Linux. But, you don't get to steal parts of Linux or anything else under the GPL and pass it off as yours -- that's just plain old copyright violation. There's no blanket exemption to re-use it any way you choose; you must adhere to the license granted to you.
So, if someone wrote software based on Linux and find themselves running afoul of the GPL, it's likely not because GPL code is 'viral', it's that you tried to steal code you had no right to. Which is entirely different from this whole 'viral' talk.
u
What companies need is an occasional reminder that they specifically can't just incorporate Linux and other GPL code "into their products" any way they choose. It just doesn't work that way. As an end user, you can make use of GPL'd software until you're blue in the face with pretty much no obligations. As a company, you can't just take parts of it without any consequences. It's not a public domain code repository to pillage to your heart's content -- it's Open Source (TM), and there are rules about what you can and can't do with it.
I'm not sure that steering "developers/bsinesses away from using Linux and other GPL software in their products" is anywhere near as bad as you're thinking it might be.
Cheers
Parent
Businesses should stay away from GPL (Score:3, Informative)
If you distribute your code, you're not even allowed to link to GPL libraries without your code falling under the GPL.
There is plenty of great BSD/LGPL/MIT/etc licensed code out there which is much less of a legal nightmare.
Re:Adds to Perception of GPL as Viral (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Adds to Perception of GPL as Viral (Score:4, Informative)
From wikipedia: So, as you see, the GPL is clearly not viral. All it says is that you make derivative works with GPL works and distribute those works, you have to GPL them too, thus respecting the rights of the person who owns the code you are redistributing. You get the same thing with "closed" products too: you purchase a license to redistribute something, but the actual product you are redistributing has to stay closed.
Furthermore, you can run all kinds of closed source stuff on a GPL system. Very many websites are run on apache and very few of them are GFDL, for example. Vbulletin and CXOffice are good software examples. TiVo is another one, as much as it vexes us all. Closed source can come into contact with open source all day long without "contracting" the GPL.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you that asinine? Is a "viral video", or "viral marketing" not viral ?
Anyhow, what the grandparent was right, it's viral.
(at this point I took some time to research it myself to prove you were stupid about this)
Oh wait, the gpl is not viral. (no kidding I just realized this myself)
> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/15/20 41236 [slashdot.org]
> Pamela Jones of Groklaw has put together a short FUD-killer on the General Public License that explains why yo
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Copyright is viral (Score:4, Insightful)
The GPL is not viral. Copyright is viral. You can't take any copyrighted work and incorporate it into a new work of your own without permission from the copyright holder (excepting Fair Use). The work you incorporated "infects" your work.
Copyrighted work distributed under the GPL is different only in that it does give permission for creation of derivative works, given certain limitations. If you don't want to comply with the license, don't incorporate GPL'd code into your software. Go buy some commercial code and use that instead -- but be sure to comply with the terms of that license, because "viral" copyright will burn you if you don't. Or, if you prefer, you can write your own code so you don't need a license at all.
This is not rocket surgery. It's not even the slightest bit confusing, except when made deliberately so by FUDsters.
Parent
Service Console can be replaced (Score:3, Funny)
Not necessarily a violation. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, it is a violation if ESX is actually running a modified Linux Kernel, instead of using the Linux Kernel as a bootloader. Using the Linux Kernel as a bootloader is a done deal; just look up 'kexec' for proof of it. (Though I'm fairly certain kexec isn't what VMware uses).
But even then, remember that ESX is their "enterprise" product, which acts more like a hypervisor, and is not to be confused with VMware Workstation, VMware Player, or VMware Server.
Re:Not necessarily a violation. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, a better solution would be for the courts to rule that this silly legal theory that "won't run without X" === "derived from X" is bunk. "Derived" works should really only
Re:Not necessarily a violation. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.vmware.com/download/open_source.html [vmware.com]
Heck the ESX EULA, gives you a nice hyperlink to the downloads even
http://www.vmware.com/download/eula/esx_server.ht
Parent
Uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
- Linux boots.
- Userspace tool kexec's the hypervisor (an odd way of doing things, so I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't actually what happens).
- The Linux kernel continues to run in a VM, providing an admin UI and drivers to the other guests, just as it does with Xen.
Looking at the patches that the VMWare guys have been sending in for hypervisor support, it seems like step three, at least, is accurate. Xen does the following in a typical install:- Linux is installed, with a Xen-compatible kernel.
- User reboots.
- Xen Hypervisor boots.
- Xen Hypervisor loads a Linux (or NetBSD or Solaris, or Windows with Xen Enterprise) domain 0 (privileged) guest, which runs the (userspace) management tools and provides device drivers.
There has, I believe, been some work done making Xen boot using kexec from Linux, so you can skip step 2 if you want. If you do this, then you get exactly the same set of steps as VMWare ESX.Now, to be fair, Xen actually does include some code (stuff like atomic operations, for example) from Linux (and is GPL'd, making this a non-issue), but this was done to save time, rather than because the code has to come from Linux.
Re:Uh, what? (Score:4, Informative)
No, you're missing the point. Linux is loaded first, then a closed source module, which loads a closed source OS. The closed source module is a derived work of linux.
But they don't use kexec. They use a closed source module.
Arguments should be evaluated on their merits, not on who makes them.
Did you miss the part about the closed source module? There is no public interface. This isn't kexec. VMware are distributing the kernel and a closed source module together. Can you name another company that does that?
Parent
Just say no to FUD (Score:3, Informative)
Uhh, this is a virtualization system. The ESX kernel provides a hardware abstraction layer which the linux kernel in the service console can access.
So yes, it IS running two kernels, the ESX kernel which has priority, and the linux kernel running on top of it in a VM like every other virtualized kernel, once it gets running. Duh.
But the meat of the FA seems to be that "Because a Linux kernel is used to initiate the ESX kernel, and because the linux kernel has a binary blob driver to help in the bootstrap process, QED ESX kernel is considered a derivitive work, because Linus says that things which require kernel changes are derivitive works" WTF?
FUD is bad. No matter the source.
The Linux kernel allows binary blobs. VMWare uses an F@#)(* huge binary blob to bootstrap ESX and other stuff. OOOHHH SCARY bogeyman violate GPL. Either sue (Linus does have standing. The SCSI author actually does have standing if it includes his code anywhere in the hacked up kernel) or get off the pot.
And Just say no to FUD.
lucky bastards! (Score:3, Funny)
Derived Works (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes I have to ask: where the fuck are the lawyers? Did we finally kill them all? ;-)
Folks, software creators like Linus or the FSF people, can put whatever terms into licenses that they want, but one thing they can't do is define derived works. Congress does that (very poorly, so the courts end up mostly stuck with the job). And unless you make something that is a defined work, do never need to get bound to the license in the first place, so.. words in the GPL do not matter, and Linus' opinion does not matter. Well, it matters in the since that we're talking about smart people who have obviously given the issue some thought. But that's all.
What I'm getting at, is that Linus is making an argument. He is not giving an authoritative declaration as a copyright holder or licensor. He can't.
Linus has determined? (inferred? decided?) that if something works w/out Linux, it's not a derived work, and if it doesn't work w/out Linux, it is a derived work. I think that's very arbitrary, and brings up so many (apparent?) counter-examples that it would terrify everyone in the software industry except for maybe the BIOS guys.
I call shenanigans..Article is Pure FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
2. VMWare licenses the Implimentation of Linux used in ESX from Red Hat, however nowhere is that mentioned in the Article.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Red Hat are not the copyright holders of (all of) Linux. They cannot license Linux under any terms other than the GPL.
FUD based on a fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't Tivoization (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Christopher Hellwig put it best: Exactly. Linux would've pushed legal action by now if they thought it would get them anywhere. The defense rests, end of story. So what is the point of this article? To whine about how unfair this is? Ok, maybe. But such is life.
--
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called Democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
Hardware Support (Score:4, Interesting)
Being a hypervisor, it has to access all kinds of devices like VGA consoles, serial ports, Fibre Channel HBAs, SCSI HBAs, IDE controllers (for CDROMs), Ethernet adapters, etc., etc. So my question is, where does the ESX hypervisor (vmkernel) get these? Does it pull them from Linux or did they write their own? This hardware _HAS_ to be setup, initialized, and arbitrated. Does vmkernel have it's own stack of device drivers, or does it conveniently run the ones in the Linux "bootloader"?
I'm thinking there's more to this than just the binary blob issue...
I'm sure (Score:3, Funny)
I don't understand this (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
nothing mysterious here (Score:5, Informative)
VMware is not infringing anything. First, they have high standards of ethics. Even if they didn't, they would be too smart for that. When ESX was designed, there were other choices for the console OS, FreeBSD for instance. But they figured out that using Linux was legal and did so. Both VMware and Linux benefit from this. Yes, it is not a "standard", well-understood relationship such as running some app on top of the kernel. But it respects the technical aspects of the license and I believe its spirit as well (although my interpretation of the "spirit" may differ from yours).
One could argue that Linux benefits more from VMware than the other way around. In many cases VMware ESX introduced Linux to corporate data centers that wanted nothing to do with it. The sales people had to work hard to convince potential customers that the product was NOT running on Linux, that Linux was just running in a separate VM to help along with various tasks.
Linux is also helped by the fact that virtual machines offer a low-cost way of experimenting with new systems, and add a layer of freedom in the conservative corporate IT environment.
As to whether VMware should be free software, there are situations for which free software is just not the right model and VMware is a good example. In the early years of the company, someone tried to start a competing free-software product (at some point called Freemware) but it didn't go far. VMware is a large (huge) system. It took a lot of unglamorous work from a lot of people under the same roof to bring it to life. It was almost a miracle that it would run. It stressed CPUs in truly novel ways. (The programmers hit and had to work around previously unknown bugs in the CPU.) I, the eternal pessimist, feared that we'd never be able to make it stable enough for a viable product. Fortunately I was wrong, and in any case Windows was a lot less stable than VMware those days, so it didn't matter that much.
Luigi
Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:directly on the harware = uses GNU/Linux (Score:5, Informative)
No, actually, it doesn't mean that at all. You have no actual concept of how ESX works, you just SSH'd into a box, ran uname and considered yourself clever. What you are looking at is the Service Console. The SC runs a modified RHEL 3, and functions on bootup as a bootloader for the vmkernel. Once the vmkernel is loaded, the vmkernel handles all hardware access and virtualization functions, and is a completely separate OS from the service console. The Service Console continues running as a pseudo-VM with API hooks into the vmkernel to preform management functions. It bridges the vmkernel with the outside world. The vmkernel itself, the underlying OS running everything and managing hardware access, is proprietary, and is not Linux.
Might I suggest you take some VMware classes to gain a better understanding of how this stuff works.
Parent
Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel (Score:5, Insightful)
'Q. Does ESX Server Run on Linux? On Windows?
A. ESX Server runs natively on server hardware, without a host operating system.
Ok, so ESX doesn't need a host OS. It's pretty clear that ESX installs directly on the hardware without needing Windows, Linux or any other OS installed first - ESX itself is the OS. The question then is whether the ESX OS is based on Linux.
Parent
Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Nagios (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel (Score:4, Informative)
"[The] VMware ESX hypervisor virtualization approach provides lower overhead and better control and granularity for allocating resources (CPU-time, disk-bandwidth, network-bandwidth, memory-utilization) to virtual machines. It also increases security, thus positioning VMware ESX as an enterprise-grade product." - Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Whereas the desktop products operate over the OS layer, ESX is closer to the bare hardware (Type 1 versus Type 2 hypervisor - Read more [wikipedia.org]. The question in this case is why it needs the Linux kernel "loader" if it is a self-contained kernel. My understanding of the product isn't deep enough to speculate.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
IMO, a derivative work has to include some significant* part the work from which it is derived, not merely reference it. But I don't have a team of lawyers to back up that opinion, alas.
*by which I mean things like the names of API functions aren't sufficient.