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Some quotes that I feel shows VMware's attitude towards the software freedom community: [...] the VMware defense in claiming that overall, they could only find

Some quotes that I feel shows VMware's attitude towards the software freedom community: [...] the VMware defense in claiming that overall, they could only find very few functions that could be attributed to Christoph, and that this may altogether be only 1% of the Linux code they use in VMware ESXi. At times their lawyers made statements like linux is this small yellow box in the left bottom corner (of our diagram). So of course already the diagrams are drawn in a way to twist the facts according to their view on reality.

xingxiong 11y ago
One should make a graph showing man years put into each part and see how big the kernel would be compared to the wmware parts. It would most likely paint a completely different picture and also show the importance of that 1 percent of the plaintiff.
devit 11y ago
Considering that there are definitely more than a hundred major contributors to the Linux kernel, it's not unreasonable that a single one's contributions only make up 1% of the total.
- revelation 11y ago
  1% would be a massive, massive part of Linux. I'd be surprised to find any one kernel developer that has 1%.
delsarto 11y ago
What did you expect them to say? Linux is a huge part of what we do? Here's how I see it. Vmkernel has a driver API. It's documented, versioned, comes with a ddk and has drivers written directly to it. As we all know, Linux basically has driver apis. They are not as explicit as the vmkernel driver apis; they are not versioned and deliberately unstable - but if you've written a line of kernel code you know they are there. Now it seems it is OK to ship a binary blob driver that links against Linux driver apis. Nvidia, ati, lots of arm type boards and now zfs. I say seems because, well, so far everyone has pretty much gone along with it. In some of the comments on zfs, I see people go as far to say that the Linux driver APIs are tacitly considered lgpl (ie. similar to why you can ship a binary against glibc - although obviously glibc has made the exception explicit) Can I do the reverse? Implement a GPL licensed wrapper that converts the Linux driver API to one provided by a binary blob (ie. what vmklinux does talking to vmkernel) and thus use the drivers? I don't know, I think it's a good question to find an answer to.
- georgyo 11y ago
  You missed a pretty big part here. OpenZFS and Nvidia are modules of the kernel, they use the exposed API. OpenZFS is fully open source, with an incompatible license. Nivida's graphic driver has a GPLed portion that it's binary blob loads into. OpenZFS is may be only considered derivative, because when it compiles, it has to include the kernel header files, because that is how you compile C code. No part's of its code base infringe on linux's and no part of linux's code base infring on OpenZFS's. Just the compile binary might be infringing. However this has implications that are far reaching, as if this is considered derivative. GLIBc is GPL, does that mean everything compiled against GLIBc are derivative of GLIBc? If so, this means a great many things are legal required to be GPLed and code shared. Back on topic, in the case of VMWare, the claim is that they are actually using GPLed linux code in their code. Much more than using the exposed API. This one should be an open shut case.
  - delsarto 11y ago
    Glibc is a bad example, as they have explict linkage exceptions There seems to be some thought that vmware are idiots and copied a bunch of Linux code and didn't release it. It's more about when something becomes a derivative work. Much more subtle
    - djsumdog 11y ago
      The implications of this are pretty broad reaching. I think it'd be amazing if, at the end of this, the VMWare kernels all becoming opensource.
      - icebraining 11y ago
        That'll never happen, one can't force someone else to abide by one's license, only force them to stop using one's work and pay damages.
  - RRRA 11y ago
    glibc is LGPL, not GPL like the kernel.
belorn 11y ago
Using diagrams and graphs to distort data has been utilized for such a long time that seems hard to find cases where it was correctly used to help understanding data. I even know a famous Swedish sketch (and accompanying song) that has misrepresenting diagrams as its central theme. I can prove without a fault that the most code running on my server is the kernel. I can also prove that its the least significant code in the system. Counting cycles, the kernels idle function runs often at 99%. Counting bytes stored on the disk, the kernel is just a few MB in a vast sea of TB's of data stored and thus are far less than 1% of the machine. In terms of cognitive thinking, the machine could be described as a Linux box, a Debian machine, a GNU/Linux system, or a webserver, each attributing different independence to the kernel running inside. In terms of user-interaction, the kernel barely exist and I rarely ever interacts with it. In terms of executable binaries that I run, most have a larger number of syscalls in them. The statement that "the diagrams are drawn in a way to twist the facts according to their view on reality" is a perfectly unbiased. If I were at a court and saw a diagram being presented by a party, I would by default distrust it and wonder what the actually data say.
bsder 11y ago
They're definitely obfuscating the amount. If it were just a couple of functions that could be ripped out and rewritten, VMWare would have done it long before this hit court. This doesn't even get into "linkage". They're almost certainly using huge chunks of Linux code wholesale.

xingxiong 11y ago

One should make a graph showing man years put into each part and see how big the kernel would be compared to the wmware parts. It would most likely paint a completely different picture and also show the importance of that 1 percent of the plaintiff.

devit 11y ago

Considering that there are definitely more than a hundred major contributors to the Linux kernel, it's not unreasonable that a single one's contributions only make up 1% of the total.

revelation 11y ago
1% would be a massive, massive part of Linux. I'd be surprised to find any one kernel developer that has 1%.

delsarto 11y ago

What did you expect them to say? Linux is a huge part of what we do? Here's how I see it. Vmkernel has a driver API. It's documented, versioned, comes with a ddk and has drivers written directly to it. As we all know, Linux basically has driver apis. They are not as explicit as the vmkernel driver apis; they are not versioned and deliberately unstable - but if you've written a line of kernel code you know they are there. Now it seems it is OK to ship a binary blob driver that links against Linux driver apis. Nvidia, ati, lots of arm type boards and now zfs. I say seems because, well, so far everyone has pretty much gone along with it. In some of the comments on zfs, I see people go as far to say that the Linux driver APIs are tacitly considered lgpl (ie. similar to why you can ship a binary against glibc - although obviously glibc has made the exception explicit) Can I do the reverse? Implement a GPL licensed wrapper that converts the Linux driver API to one provided by a binary blob (ie. what vmklinux does talking to vmkernel) and thus use the drivers? I don't know, I think it's a good question to find an answer to.

georgyo 11y ago
You missed a pretty big part here. OpenZFS and Nvidia are modules of the kernel, they use the exposed API. OpenZFS is fully open source, with an incompatible license. Nivida's graphic driver has a GPLed portion that it's binary blob loads into. OpenZFS is may be only considered derivative, because when it compiles, it has to include the kernel header files, because that is how you compile C code. No part's of its code base infringe on linux's and no part of linux's code base infring on OpenZFS's. Just the compile binary might be infringing. However this has implications that are far reaching, as if this is considered derivative. GLIBc is GPL, does that mean everything compiled against GLIBc are derivative of GLIBc? If so, this means a great many things are legal required to be GPLed and code shared. Back on topic, in the case of VMWare, the claim is that they are actually using GPLed linux code in their code. Much more than using the exposed API. This one should be an open shut case.
- delsarto 11y ago
  Glibc is a bad example, as they have explict linkage exceptions There seems to be some thought that vmware are idiots and copied a bunch of Linux code and didn't release it. It's more about when something becomes a derivative work. Much more subtle
  - djsumdog 11y ago
    The implications of this are pretty broad reaching. I think it'd be amazing if, at the end of this, the VMWare kernels all becoming opensource.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      That'll never happen, one can't force someone else to abide by one's license, only force them to stop using one's work and pay damages.
- RRRA 11y ago
  glibc is LGPL, not GPL like the kernel.

belorn 11y ago

Using diagrams and graphs to distort data has been utilized for such a long time that seems hard to find cases where it was correctly used to help understanding data. I even know a famous Swedish sketch (and accompanying song) that has misrepresenting diagrams as its central theme. I can prove without a fault that the most code running on my server is the kernel. I can also prove that its the least significant code in the system. Counting cycles, the kernels idle function runs often at 99%. Counting bytes stored on the disk, the kernel is just a few MB in a vast sea of TB's of data stored and thus are far less than 1% of the machine. In terms of cognitive thinking, the machine could be described as a Linux box, a Debian machine, a GNU/Linux system, or a webserver, each attributing different independence to the kernel running inside. In terms of user-interaction, the kernel barely exist and I rarely ever interacts with it. In terms of executable binaries that I run, most have a larger number of syscalls in them. The statement that "the diagrams are drawn in a way to twist the facts according to their view on reality" is a perfectly unbiased. If I were at a court and saw a diagram being presented by a party, I would by default distrust it and wonder what the actually data say.

bsder 11y ago

They're definitely obfuscating the amount. If it were just a couple of functions that could be ripped out and rewritten, VMWare would have done it long before this hit court. This doesn't even get into "linkage". They're almost certainly using huge chunks of Linux code wholesale.