Friday - August 17, 2007

VMWare, Linux and the GPL... 

 So far I'm surprised this isn't getting more net-press.  I'm sure it will in the next few days, but an analyst is asserting that VMWare has a licensing issue with it's use of GPL'd linux kernel code.  

http://www.venturecake.com/the-vmware-house-of-cards/

The article is pretty interesting to read.  I can't vouch for it's accuracy however.  If you read the comments on various sites there is at least a shadow of doubt.

http://www.theregister.com/2007/08/16/vmware_derived_from_linux/

http://digg.com/tech_news/The_VMware_house_of_cards

And VMWare does provide source for something:

http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/open_source.html

It's unclear if this is the 'infringing code' or not.  It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.  In the end it won't be a big deal for either Linux or VMWare, but I suspect their will be much writing, blogging and flaming to be had before it's over.