VMware joins Linux Foundation: what about the GPL?
laforge.gnumonks.org
laforge.gnumonks.org
Similarly, I think applying a purity test to the LF would be counterproductive: it would end up refusing essentially everyone's money and becoming the FSF or Apache Foundation -- two flat-broke 501(c)(3)s. (Aside, individuals should never ever donate to the LF; donate to a 501(c)(3) instead.)
To sum: I would rather have VMware in than out, and then influence the LF to abide by its broader open source constituency, funding projects at the grass roots that are the lifeblood of open source -- but I also understand those that would view taking VMware's money as selling out that constituency!
"I understand your outrage, and I also have mixed feelings about the role of the Linux Foundation in open-source. I am on the Technical Oversight Committee of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation which is a Linux Foundation project. However I do want to say that the Linux Foundation is a not-for-profit 'business league' under US law, rather than a not-for-profit 'charitable organization.' The fact that they have these partner companies which make them up, gives them a lot more money than the open-source charitable organizations can provide. Because they have more money, in my opinion the Linux Foundation has the potential to do a lot more good for open source, and so my personal goal is to work from within the Linux Foundation to help it do that. For example, I was very vocal about us buying and open-sourcing RethinkDB. What you're asking for is for us to test the 'purity' of businesses before we let them join the league that is the Linux Foundation. That is a bad idea. It just means fewer businesses will join the league and less of their money will be available for open-source. The Free Software Foundation and Apache Foundation are good examples of similar things: charitable organizations which now do not have very much money because they are not willing to be 'tainted' by big business. On the flip side, please do not donate to the business league as a private individual; give your resources to these charitable organizations who need it instead. But I would rather have VMWare be one of the league contributors than not have their money. We can always work from within the Linux Foundation to say 'you have to listen to these people who want Linux to remain committed to open-source,' so that they keep funding these projects that keep our open-source movement going. On the other hand I understand why you think that taking VMWare's money is essentially 'selling out,' saying that we care more about the money than about our principles."
By this do you mean projects with closable source licenses (Apache/BSD/MIT) and the companies that prefer to use them? Does this mean we'll see more sub projects like the CNCF which are focused on non-GPL OSS?
>I would rather have VMware in than out
I agree in general that a big tent model works well, but I think the question here is more about what it means to be 'in'. Maybe you have more nuts and bolts insight into it. From the outside, I think the feeling is that membership was as a symbol that large organizations support Free software; the world is changing to embrace FOSS; etc. But now it looks more like there's no ideology involved and it's more like NASCAR sponsorship at best. At worst, it looks like 'pay us and we'll won't enforce the GPL as it pertains to you'.
I'm not surprised pitchforks are getting rustled.
It's the Linux Foundation, not the GPL Foundation or the FOSS Foundation. And Linus has made his position abundantly clear on the LKML that the GPL is a tool that serves Linux, not the other way around. Therefore, it shouldn't be all that surprising that there is no ideology involved.
You mean the GPL v2 kernel that wont ever migrate to GPL v3, keeping it incompatible with anything a GPL purist should touch. Meanwhile Debian GNU/Hurd still isn't production ready.
AFAICT, the only thing the license has to do with it is that it was available under a F/OSS license at a time when all other alternatives were legally encumbered, enabling it to grab the early mindshare and benefit from network effects.
LF assets $20,915,947 total revenue $31,452,792
FSF assets $1,009,228 total revenue $1,110,148
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/FinancialStatement_FY2014.pdf
Note that LF gets 99.9% of its revenue from "program services," which I assume is corporate sponsorship and the training programs they run. FSF gets $100,000 from mail-order merch and the rest from donations.
Looking at the FSF patron list and price levels, it seems like the FSF get about half of their donations from corporate sponsors and half from individual sponsors: https://www.fsf.org/patrons
(One interesting thing is that Google stopped sponsoring the FSF in 2016.)
The FSF is definitely underfunded, donate today if you have not donated recently: https://my.fsf.org/donate
Hardly. We simply run a tight, fiscal ship. But broke? Please stop spreading FUD.
I think this presumes a different rationale on the part of the Linux foundation. The answer to the question "Here is some money, can I join?" is always yes. And with enough money it is "heck yes!"
And that leads to "I guess I was being overly naive :("
Which is yes, you were.
Why do politicians, managers, and ex-lovers all have to just "put their differences aside and move on." ? Because if you don't you can't make any progress even if the penultimate step here was one that hurt you badly.
The best way to score this is that VMWare is going to participate in a forum with others who can help guide them to a better compliance record. Both to understand why compliance is good, and to alleviate fears that VMWare might have that complying would leave them vulnerable. What they were before is in the past, now you have a way to work with them to move forward. Consider the alternative that they don't join, they continue to be huge FOSS scofflaws and continue to provide some sort of 'you don't really have to comply' example to others who might be uncomfortable with the GPL. When you look at it this way, it really is a good thing.
I don't think this is the case. VMware (and their lawyers) have studied the GPL and genuinely do not believe they are not complying with its requirements.
This isn't the typical "shady hardware vendor embeds modified busybox" situation where the (in this case alleged) lack of compliance is out of laziness, fear or ignorance.
[Disclaimer: as per my other comment, I used to work at VMware, and am inherently biased in that sense, although I also happen to agree with VMware on the whole ESXi/vmklinux situation.]
The debate has always been about whether the vmkernel is itself a derived work of vmklinux or Linux.
Ie, for some definition of independence and separation, how independent are vmklinux and vmkernel, and how separated are they in function and use? Could one simply remove the linux parts and plug in a different unix like kernel?
With two independent work I should be able to put them each on a different computer and have a meaningful result from doing so. Two work can have a cumulative effect when brought together, but independent they need to still be meaningful and working on their own. If I arbitrary separate a program, I can obviously not do so since they will not start, function proper or produce a meaningful effect on their own.
Please refer to the quote from the license I've provided, and belorn's thought experiment here.
What's the basis for this position?
It's a little too long to copy/paste here, but read Zach Amsden's reply.
VMware has a long and inexcusable history of GPL violations. And that history has not yet seen an end, it continues to this day.
Of course there is something wrong with this.
There is nothing wrong with this, but the names of these bodies should reflect their interests. A name like 'Linux Foundation' should be the flagship organization promoting Linux and open source globally as well as user and developer interests. Some thing like 'Linux Industry Group' is a better reflection of the work Linux foundation does.
Ultimately its high time end-users organize some kind of funded entity to support open source projects and protect user interests. Not just one but multiple such bodies. Without that the interests of those funding projects, developers and industry bodies will triumph and you will just have to accept what ever is 'decided' for you.
I think forums like this should also gently encourage all the thousands of startups who dip into the Linux ecosystem pool but do not contribute anything back even after they are successful, sometimes wildly. Github and Redis comes to mind. That doesn't feel right.
Hiring people working on specific open source projects is good, but its not support, its protecting your own interests. Non-conditional funding so they can continue to do their work that you have benefited from is better.
Its like a river, if you keep on taking from it eventually there will be nothing left.
Its just end users also need to organize to fund and promote open source. There is a perception these things are taken care of but they are not, most Linux groups are industry bodies.
If Github benefits from Redis and its just one of hundreds of examples then there is a moral case to be made to support it and give back to open source in someway so the stream continues to flow. In this case Github had not even bothered to reach out to the Redis author, so there is something wrong here in how successful startups are engaging and using open source.
Approval of prize proposals and recognition of the correct wallet address of winners can be handle via stakeholder voting among existing currency holders. The currency base can be bootstrapped by recognizing the efforts of volunteer developers who would otherwise be performing work for free.
If an API is then added for transferring and proving ownership of shares, developers will then be able to sell their shares in independent exchange markets for other currencies if there ends up being a demand. Third parties might be interested in buying currency from developers in exchange for cash so they can list prize proposals on the network for completing work on software that benefits them.
This would potentially allow the foundation to indirectly compensate developers without having to raise the funds and hold the cash itself.
Create a virtual currency which mints fresh shares for open source developers who complete public prizes and bug bounties for GPL licensed software. Prizes can be publicly listed and disbursed to the wallet address of the correct winner using stakeholder voting among existing currency holders. The currency base can be bootstrapped by issuing shares to volunteer developers for completing work they would have otherwise done for free.
Add in a mechanism for transferring and verifying ownership of shares between, and developers can potentially sell a portion of their shares for dollars in independent exchange markets, without the central organization having to directly collect revenues and hold cash itself.
It will either then be decided invalid in court much later---in which case the CIA has plenty of time to do whatever it is they wanted to do. Or the existing incestuous relationship between the government and the private company will ensure that this remains a grey area of law for a long long time.
More so if software is build reproducibly, signed, and so on.
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/edge/08/...
> GPLv3 adds more clarity with regard to what constitutes a derivative work. For example, GPLv3 states that if the program is "specifically designed" to work with a GPL-governed library, then the library is considered part of the overall work and the entire application is governed by the GPL. However, if one could swap out the GPL library for another library (i.e., if the application wasn't "specifically designed" to work with the GPL library), then it's not part of the overall work and would not be governed by the license.
If I could install ossec and do my own iptables/nftables work on my TV, I find it highly unlikely that a 0 day would slip past my alert filter (most likely it would still work... but unless they are specifically wiping logs, traces, etc...)
This is not true, not everything in the kernel is GPLv2-only, some parts are GPLv2-or-later (but it's less than the GPLv2-only code).
Also, consider that the LF may now be helping VMware with their compliance issues. They have many programs to help companies build compliance processes and tooling - is the author suggesting VMware can never right its wrongs? Would we say the same thing about Intel who wasn't that great in its initial Linux journey? Just turn them away for trying to get better?
Qualcomm is much more iffy, there is some work on integrating support to mainline but it's only beginning.
You lose the warranty bit and still cannot replace FCC-approved modem firmware, because certification reasons.
So many slanderous remarks, 'you can abuse Linux', 'the Linux Foundations has no ethical concerns', 'work with the community, and not against it'. And shouldn't there have been mentioned that VMware afaiu won a (first?) court case?
The questions are important of course. Here a imo much more fruitful reading, likely well-known: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/...
- you can abuse Linux, the GPL and copyleft while still being accepted amidst the Linux Foundation Members
- it means the Linux Foundations has no ethical concerns whatsoever about accepting such entities without previously asking them to become clean
- it also means that VMware has still not understood that Linux and FOSS is about your actions, particularly the kind of choices you make how to technically work with the community, and not against it.
I think all of those apply to Microsoft, too. The Linux Foundation tainted its image when it accepted Microsoft without even demanding that it "becomes clean," as the author says, in regards to its exploitative use of patents against OEMs that dare to use Linux-based operating systems.
Also Microsoft has been embracing FOSS more and more, they certainly don't do anything copyleft but they do release their own things in MIT and accept contributions on a number of significant projects.
Nonetheless I disagree with you. I think it's worth actually pursuing this and settling the VMware situation clearly. Uncertainty is rarely a good thing for anyone in these kind of situations, and so I'm disappointed that there still hasn't been a real ruling on the merits of the case.
Personally I remain convinced that the vmklinux/shim usage pattern is ok by the letter of the license, but I can understand Harald Welte and Christopher Hellwig's viewpoint.
Like you, I hope for a speedy resolution of the VMware situation, but I'm not so confident that such a resolution will shine much light on similar issues in the future.
The things with FOSS is there are different degrees of rigidity. On the one hand, you have copyleft licenses like GPL that tend to make commercial development very tricky. On the other hand you have more permissive licenses like MIT and Apache that do encourage further open source work but where the vast majority of improvements don't get committed back upstream (since they become a part of proprietary offerings).
Edit: To be clear I'm talking more about philosophy, not licensing. I do still struggle with the idea of GPL requiring changes to be made public.
So if I sell you software under the GPL, I have to provide you the source. You are then allowed, but not required, to publish the source.
Most of the web stuff that people work on these days is rather outside of this problem, unless is an AGPL license.
It is tricky if you want to base your commercial product on a derivation of a GPL licensed software.
But per-copy licensing without source code availability is an atrocity enabled only by misapplication of copyright/IP laws, where copyright holder can write practically anything into the EULA and have the law system enforce the terms "for free". I hope our civilization eventually comes up with better and more GPL-aligned software distribution model.
I can understand that many here disagree with this, and I am an open source advocate myself. Nevertheless, it is important to understand how some companies work. The best way to change this, is to create enough open source software, which can be used as a replacement for closed packages.
You're not paying for the software on that server.
You're paying for a license to use a few non-free packages containing trademarked material (basically the visual skins / logos nicely factored out) but more importantly, support.
Equivalent basis for support contracts, which have actually been the key part for many years in most non-consumer software contracts even when they nominally include copyright licenses, are quite possible (and common) with GPL software.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvaldss-love-hate-relat...
Net-net, I struggle to get more worked up about GPL compliance than the author of the affected open source compliance.
Are you also advocating ignoring OS X license terms (ie: do you advocate running a bought copy of OS X in a vm on non-apple hardware to build iOS/OS X applications)? Pirate Microsoft Windows, SQL Server - or run Oracle databases without paying a license fee?
If not, I can't see how you can support not following the rather simple copyleft licenses. If a company don't want to leverage all the years of developer effort that is given away for free with the Linux kernel - they're free to invest the millions of dollars worth of work to write their own kernel. I mean, if a grad student could write the Linux kernel in the early 90s, surely VMware can write an OS kernel today?
The bottom line is that everyone's life is better because of FLOSS. So many of us owe our careers to an army of forgotten programmers who share their time and brain power to build software for the public domain.
If offers artists in other countries an alternative to expensive software like photoshop. It allows a startup to lower the cost of opening a call center by not having to buy Windows licenses. The cancer researchers trying to find a personalized treatment for your colon cancer use FLOSS. Your state government uses software from Microsoft and Oracle. And even those are affected by and improved due to the existence of FLOSS.
I know you wont understand this. But there are a lot of kids reading this too and they should know not everyone agrees with you.
I'm assuming by "people" you mean pirates like VMWare or mindless end users like yourself, since it's a huge deal for developers. When I make the conscious decision to license my work for others to use under the GPL instead of something completely permissive like MIT, I clearly don't want some commercial enterprise ripping off my work and using it to line their own pockets without even contributing back their modifications.
FOSS makes the Internet possible at lower cost and with more innovation than it would be without it. Full stop.