Re:VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
by dredmorbius on Thursday March 05, 2015 @03:06PM
(#9153462)
I think it's far more likely that huhtenberg is speaks of what he knows not.
There's no legal department of any note in Silicon Valley which isn't painfully aware of the GPL, nor has there been for the past 15 years, if not 25. They may have decided, as he somewhat more plausibly suggests, that the risks aren't significant. FSF have pursued GPL compliance cases in the past, and their goals are to increase the scope of Free Software -- getting either larger works released as open source or changes committed back. IIRC some major GCC enhancements came by way of this route.
Odds of seeking a cash settlement or other punitive award are slight. There's similarly little risk of customers being sued, though other VMWare partners could conceivably be. This doesn't do much for corporate goodwill in at least some quarters, and a lot of early GNU / Free Software folks are now in senior positions within the industry.
There's no legal department of any note in Silicon Valley which isn't painfully aware of the GPL, nor has there been for the past 15 years, if not 25. They may have decided, as he somewhat more plausibly suggests, that the risks aren't significant. FSF have pursued GPL compliance cases in the past, and their goals are to increase the scope of Free Software -- getting either larger works released as open source or changes committed back. IIRC some major GCC enhancements came by way of this route.
Odds of seeking a cash settlement or other punitive award are slight. There's similarly little risk of customers being sued, though other VMWare partners could conceivably be. This doesn't do much for corporate goodwill in at least some quarters, and a lot of early GNU / Free Software folks are now in senior positions within the industry.