VMware May Violate Linux Copyrights 443
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.'"
Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Help me understand... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They made a movie about this with Charlie Sheen (Score:5, Informative)
What details were omitted from TFA, in your opinion?
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.
Re:Not necessarily a violation. (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I use a better alternative (Score:2, Informative)
Cool.
(VMWare Server is free too, you know.)
Re:I call shenanigans..Article is Pure FUD (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.
Re:Nagios (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Help me understand... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FUD based on a fallacy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If it cannot be loaded without the linux kernel (Score:2, Informative)
This looks to me like the same situation as Windows 95, it boots up with DOS then loads a kernel that takes over much of the functionality, or Netware that also loads boots with DOS then loads the kernel.
The problem I have is that it appears that the original Linux boot OS is still the one that's at the root of everything, though the VMWare virtual machines run under the vmkernel which runs on the Linux OS.
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
Re:directly on the harware = uses GNU/Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Adds to Perception of GPL as Viral (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.
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:Help me understand... (Score:1, Informative)
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:Help me understand... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:VMware, ESX and a bad smell (Score:1, Informative)
He really did smell! And it wasn't the flowery type!
Uh, but seriously, you really needed linux skills for the position you were being hired for.