<story><title>VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation</title><url>http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nordsieck</author><text>I doubt that it&amp;#x27;ll come to that.  There are some really nasty consequences of being found to violate the GPL:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the
  Program except as expressly provided under this License.
  Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or
  distribute the Program is void, and will automatically
  terminate your rights under this License...
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
From what I understand, there is no obvious way to re-gain a license to GPL&amp;#x27;d code once it&amp;#x27;s been terminated (short of asking every single individual contributor).  There is the distinct possibility that VMWare could be enjoined from using Linux in any way if they are ruled against (and it sticks on appeal).</text></item><item><author>tw04</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m surprised it took this long.  I can&amp;#x27;t really blame them, after 15 years of ignoring the GPL, they probably figured nobody would ever come up with the financial resources to actually go after them.  This is going to take years to come to a resolution and millions and millions of dollars in lawyers fees.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DannyBee</author><text>&amp;quot;there is no obvious way to re-gain a license to GPL&amp;#x27;d code once it&amp;#x27;s been terminated&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This is false for GPLv2, sadly, despite people wanting it to be so.&lt;p&gt;GPLv2 says &amp;quot;6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients&amp;#x27; exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So every time vmware downloads the kernel, they get a license.
Even if the prior time, it was terminated.&lt;p&gt;(THis is pretty well accepted, but not happily, by most open source lawyers).&lt;p&gt;GPLv3 is different here.</text></comment>
<story><title>VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation</title><url>http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nordsieck</author><text>I doubt that it&amp;#x27;ll come to that.  There are some really nasty consequences of being found to violate the GPL:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the
  Program except as expressly provided under this License.
  Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or
  distribute the Program is void, and will automatically
  terminate your rights under this License...
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
From what I understand, there is no obvious way to re-gain a license to GPL&amp;#x27;d code once it&amp;#x27;s been terminated (short of asking every single individual contributor).  There is the distinct possibility that VMWare could be enjoined from using Linux in any way if they are ruled against (and it sticks on appeal).</text></item><item><author>tw04</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m surprised it took this long.  I can&amp;#x27;t really blame them, after 15 years of ignoring the GPL, they probably figured nobody would ever come up with the financial resources to actually go after them.  This is going to take years to come to a resolution and millions and millions of dollars in lawyers fees.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>That would be an interesting result. To my knowledge the GPL (any version) hasn&amp;#x27;t actually been litigated to the point of a published decision (would love to hear that it had).&lt;p&gt;That said, (and continuing with my possibly incorrect assumption that the GPL hasn&amp;#x27;t been litigated) if it does get decided that this remedy can be enforced by the license holders through the court, I expect it will create the largest software effort since Y2K to get rid of GPL&amp;#x27;d software in any enterprise larger than about 10 people. The business risk would become too great that they might be litigated by a rival into inoperation. (I know the author&amp;#x27;s aren&amp;#x27;t out to kill companies, they are out to enforce their rights, but there are lawyers that like nothing more than extorting companies for large sums of money and those lawyers would write &amp;quot;As you know VMWARE was damaged to the tune of several billion dollars because they didn&amp;#x27;t use the GPL correctly, and we know that you aren&amp;#x27;t using GPL correctly either, why take the risk and get a writ of compliance for a mere $&amp;lt;large sum&amp;gt;.&amp;quot; Or like the guys who are coming out of the wood work to &amp;quot;test your house for formaldahyde&amp;quot; by basically clipping some PH strips to a stick, waiting for them to turn blue, and them selling the poor home owner a multi-thousand dollar &amp;quot;remediation&amp;quot; service.&lt;p&gt;I really respect what the GPL tries to do, but especially early in its life it was way too ambiguous in its interpretation (consider the difference of opinion between FSF and Linus on loadable kernel modules for example)</text></comment>