VMware May Violate Linux Copyrights

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.'"

They made a movie about this with Charlie Sheen

[captnitro (160231)]

• Wait for big, innovative company to IPO.
• Watch as share price goes up 90% on a day when the Dow is losing 100 points. Feel bad I don't work for that company. Boo.
• Blog about possible copyright violations that would surely bring down EMC or VMW. Make investors nervous. Buy low.
• Profit.

Re:They made a movie about this with Charlie Sheen

[MouseR (3264)]

Your plan is missing a very important and crucial step:

  ?????

Re:They made a movie about this with Charlie Sheen

[GoodbyeBlueSky1 (176887)]

Don't forget:

• 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?

Re:They made a movie about this with Charlie Sheen

[kripkenstein (913150)]

Don't forget: 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?

I read TFA, and it included quite a lot of specific details, more than I expected, in fact. It may even be the case that it includes all publicly-available data (we don't have the ESX source code, so how exactly it interfaces with the Linux kernel is not entirely clear, but TFA can't be blamed for that).

What details were omitted from TFA, in your opinion?

Re:Help me understand...

[abigor (540274)]

Lots of proprietary software runs just fine on Linux, including drivers, without violating the GPL. VMWare's ESX Server is sort of a special case as people seem to think a part of the product is itself derived from Linux. "Derived from Linux" is not the same as "running on Linux".

Re:Help me understand...

[by Anonymous Coward]

And that is the base issue... running on linux... derived from linux... either way they have to show the code.

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.

Re:Help me understand...

[cortana (588495)]

Hold on a second... you are talking about both Linux (the kernel) and Linux (the platform, which does not in fact exist). Which do you mean?

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+).

I harken back to the days of Netware NLMs. Netware didn't seem to want some sort of ownership for people loading things onto their kernel, nor did Microsoft demand rights for people distributing TSRs. So why is this different?

And look where it got them. Well, I have no idea if Netware is still alive and/or relevant today, but the sheer number of crappy proprietary drivers written by two bit hardware companies has locked them to the shitty old i386 architecture, and it looks like this will continue to be the case for decades to come.

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.

Re:Help me understand...

[cduffy (652)]

You're overstating the GPL's claimed definition. GPLv2 simply references copyright law's definition of derived works; only GPLv3 specifically references shared-library linkages as inferring derivative status, and even then only when the 3rd-party code is written to the interface provided by the GPLed code ("shared libraries and dynamically linked subprograms that the work is specifically designed to require", such that use of a common, standardized interface not specific to some GPLed work is explicitly acceptable).

Incorrect wording in title

[JosefAssad (1138611)]

Copyright gets infringed, licenses get violated.

Re:Incorrect wording in title

[gstoddart (321705)]

Copyright gets infringed, licenses get violated.

Copyright gets extended, we all get violated. :-P

Cheers

Not necessarily a violation.

[sl3xd (111641)]

There is, of course, a way that they aren't violating linux copyrights: They may simply be using the Linux Kernel to get the hardware into a known state prior to loading the VMkernel. Similar projects include LinuxBIOS, and Linux's own kexec (kexec lets you boot a new linux kernel without actually 'booting').

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.

[PCM2 (4486)]

I moderated a panel at a conference about a year ago where one of the participants was Jack Lo, VMware's senior director of R&D, and I made the comment that I had understood that VMware ESX Server was based on a modified Linux kernel. He interrupted me and said that this was a common misconception, but that it was not the case. We didn't get into more details.

Re:Not necessarily a violation.

[InsaneGeek (175763)]

Hmmm... boy it didn't take me 3 seconds on a search engine to find this or anything (stupid posts from people who couldn't take a single second to think annoy me)

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.htm l [vmware.com]

Uh, what?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

The article has some interesting comments. One is:

So according to VMware ESX actually has two kernels - the vmkernel, and a Linux kernel. This sounds a bit odd, given a computer can only run one kernel at a given time - otherwise which one determines who gets access to the CPU, memory, and other hardware?

Perhaps the writer is missing the point of having a hypervisor, which is (drum roll) to allow two kernels to run at once.

The license for the Linux kernel is quite different to the licensing for DOS that allowed Netware to use it for a bootloader.

The license for Linux only applies if you are distributing Linux (fair enough, they are), and only applies to Linux and code which is a derived work of Linux. It does not apply, for example, to binary-only applications running on Linux and using system calls. Linux includes the kexec system call, which allows the running kernel image to be replaced with another, effectively making Linux into a bootloader. This was originally written as part of the Linux BIOS project, to allow Linux to be used as (another drum roll please) a bootloader.

Linus Torvalds (the copyright holder for the Linux kernel)

Not even close. Linux owns copyright on some small parts of the kernel, but does not require copyright assignment, and so these days much of the copyright is owned by other people (not relevant, but yet another error).

Is Hellwig right, and is VMware a derived product of Linux?

Hellwig is a troll.

Unless vmkernel can be loaded without the Linux kernel, it would appear so.

Rubbish. Interfaces can not be copyrighted. It is only a derived work if it is not isolated from the kernel via a public interface. From the description in the 'article,' it sounds like:

1. Linux boots.
2. 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).
3. 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:

1. Linux is installed, with a Xen-compatible kernel.
2. User reboots.
3. Xen Hypervisor boots.
4. 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.

FUD based on a fallacy

[vrmlguy (120854)]

Go read this article (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08 /09/171248 [slashdot.org]) from last week and note that Dell apparently will be booting a version of ESX from BIOS. If ESX can be booted with an alternate bootloader, it must not be that closely tied to RedHat.

nothing mysterious here

[semenzato (445337)]

I am a former VMware programmer. Obviously I do not speak for the company, just myself.

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

[ravnous (301936)]

ESX runs directly on the hardware. They're saying ESX is what's violating the copyrights.

Re:directly on the harware = uses GNU/Linux

[TheRealFixer (552803)]

the "directly on hardware" is marketing talk saying that you dont need and shouldnt even bother with the host OS, vmware takes care of it (installation, support, updates, etc)

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.

Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel

[Silver Sloth (770927)]

Try reading TFA

Looking at an ESX server, you'll find what looks like a Linux OS. This isn't a secret - VMware call this the 'console OS'. Is ESX server based on Linux? The VMware ESX FAQ provides an answer:

'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.

To reitterate

The question then is whether the ESX OS is based on Linux

Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel

[berashith (222128)]

Strange that during a training session the instructor consistently referred to the underlying platform as a highly modified RedHat. They didn't even try to claim that this was anything else, or even just their own Linux, they used the brand name of the starting point.

Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel

[TheRealFixer (552803)]

Then you had a poor-quality instructor. Every VMware instructor I've had has been crystal clear that the Service Console runs a heavily modified version Red Hat, but that the vmkernel - the OS that's bootloaded by the SC, which handles virtualization and hardware access, or in other words the underlying platform - is a completely proprietary OS.

Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel

[sH4RD (749216)]

Because ESX server (the specific product in question here) runs differently than the Windows and Linux Workstation products (the key word being "hypervisor"):
"[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.

Re:Adds to Perception of GPL as Viral

[sH4RD (749216)]

So? If they want to make it closed source, they certainly shouldn't use Linux or GPL software in their products.

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.

Re:Adds to Perception of GPL as Viral

[gstoddart (321705)]

Whether or not VMWare violates Linux copyrights, the mere fact that this is being discussed may add to the perception of the GPL as a "viral" license, and steer developers/businesses away from using Linux and other GPL software in their products.

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

Re:Adds to Perception of GPL as Viral

[an.echte.trilingue (1063180)]

It would seem the GPL is "viral". Why do you think it is not?

One big clue is that people who claim that the GPL is "viral" have to put "viral" in quotation marks to obfuscate the meaning of the word "viral".