Tag: open sauce

VMWare sued for GPL violations

VMWare has beenrms-meets-open-sauce-detail (1) sued in Hamburg for failing to comply with Open Source rules.

The Software Freedom Conservancy said that Christoph Hellwig’s lawsuit against VMware has started in the district court of Hamburg.

In a statement the Conservancy said that it was a regretful but necessary next step in both Hellwig and Conservancy’s ongoing effort to convince VMware to comply properly with the terms of the GPLv2.

For those who came in late, GPLv2 is the licence of Linux and many other Open Source and Free Software included in VMware’s ESXi products.

Hellwig is a key Linux kernel developer and one of the earliest members of Conservancy’s GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers. He has been muttering about VMware’s misuse of GPL-licensed code since 2007.

In 2011, Conservancy discovered that VMware had failed to provide nor offer any source code for the version of BusyBox included in VMware’s ESXi products (as required by BusyBox’s licence, GPLv2).

Hellwig joined Conservancy’s GPL Compliance for Linux Developers in late 2012 and helped provide an analysis of the non-compliant releases of ESXi that VMware provided.

The conservancy said that it became apparent that VMware’s current ESXi products infringed many of Hellwig’s own copyrights, due to VMware’s failure to comply with Linux’s licence, GPLv2.

But VMware’s legal counsel finally informed Conservancy in 2014 that VMware had no intention of ceasing their distribution of proprietary-licensed works derived from Hellwig’s and other kernel developers’ copyrights, despite the terms of GPLv2.

The Conservancy and Hellwig claim 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.

Hellwig is an extensive copyright holder in the portions of Linux that VMware misappropriated and used together in a single, new work without permission.

Intel is open source king

Intel Q4_14_ResultsThe once famous proprietary chipmaker Intel is set to become the largest contributor to the open sauce Linux.

A report from the Linux Foundation said Intel was the largest corporate sponsor of new contributions to the Linux computer operating system.

This means that Intel has replaced some top notch software companies, having made more than 10,000 more changes to Linux Kernel.

It makes sense, Linux plays a significant role in computers integrated inside communications networks and industrial equipment, which are vital segments for Intel.

Doug Fisher, who heads Intel’s software group, is also on the board of the Linux Foundation he said that Intel wants to explore new markets through its chips by integrating it in wearable computing, connected appliances and mobile technologies. Intel has hired several thousand software developers to assist in developing new features for Linux.

Intel has made $350 million in revenue during 2014 by using a component of the IT infrastructure it supplies, according to the company’s annual IT business review.

The report suggested Intel is exploiting IT services in a better way like data analytics and collaboration tools for “optimized business workflows and [to] unlock new insights” to generate millions of dollars of new revenue.