A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware

Posted Mar 5, 2015 18:34 UTC (Thu) by riel (subscriber, #3142)
In reply to: A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware by realnc
Parent article: A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware

Another big question: what makes the Linux device drivers so much better than the alternatives (BSD, or VMware writing their own) that they are willing to go to court over it?

I would posit that it is the Linux community that makes the Linux device drivers better than the alternatives that VMware could have used. VMware depends on a strong Linux community. Their own actions of blatantly violating the GPL could weaken the community they depend on.

A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware

Posted Mar 6, 2015 21:46 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Isn't that obvious? Linux device drivers are officially supported by the big vendors. They have people on payroll just to make sure it doesn't break with firmware updates etc.

This makes VMware datacenter-worthy on off the shelf third party hardware, unlike something like NetApp, who had to make hardware their business model. Custom drivers makes for an entirely different business to be in.

A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware

Posted Mar 10, 2015 21:44 UTC (Tue) by helsleym (guest, #92730) [Link]

That is one possibility. Another is relative quality of the drivers may not be a factor. Perhaps VMware wants Linux drivers because the Linux community makes many more device drivers overall -- perhaps way more than any driver-compatible subset of the BSD(-derived) community.