0x66: The End of Hellwig vs. VMware

<p> <a href="https://faif.us/cast-media/FaiF_0x66_Hellwig-vs-VMware.ogg"><img alt="[Direct download of cast in Ogg/Vorbis format]" src="https://faif.us/static/img/cast/audio_ogg_button.png"/></a> <a href="https://faif.us/cast-media/FaiF_0x66_Hellwig-vs-VMware.mp3"><img alt="[Direct download of cast in MP3 format]" src="https://faif.us/static/img/cast/audio_mp3_button.png"/></a> </p> <p> <p>Bradley and Karen discuss the details of the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/">completion of the lawsuit (which Conservancy supported) between Christoph Hellwig and VMware in Germany</a>.</p> </p> <h3>Show Notes:</h3> <h4>Segment 0 (00:37)</h4> <ul> <li>Bradley mentioned the episode of <cite><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dwarf">Red Dwarf</a></cite>, <cite><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hole_(Red_Dwarf)">White Hole</a></cite>, where the <a href="http://www.cervenytrpaslik.cz/scenare/EN-22-4_White_Hole.htm">characters are speaking too slowly or two quickly due to time differentials</a>. (01:30)</li> <li>Bradley explained that <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/">the Hellwig vs. VMware suit in Germany has concluded</a>. (03:30)</li> <li>German is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)">civil law legal system</a>. (05:15)</li> <li>Christoph Hellwig <a href="http://bombadil.infradead.org/~hch/vmware/Pressrelease-2019-04-03.pdf">announced on his website</a> that he has decided not to appeal. (07:18)</li> <li>Bradley did a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vmware-code-similarity.html">technical analysis how much of Christoph's code appeared in the infringing VMware product</a>. (07:50)</li> <li><a href="https://www.jbb.de/en/attorneys/dr-till-jaeger">Till Jaeger</a> was Christoph's lawyer; Till was also the lawyer for Harald Welte's (currently defunct) <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org project</a>. (09:04)</li></ul> <h4>Segment 1 (09:26)</h4> <ul> <li>&ldquo;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll">Trolling</a>&rdquo; refers to being a non-practicing entity. Patrick McHardy is specifically a practicing entity, since he upstreamed a lot of code in Linux. (09:50)</li> <li>Bradley was thinking of the patent troll, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures">Intellectual Ventures</a>. (10:40)</li> <li>Bradley that the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Texas#Patent_litigation">Eastern district of Texas hears many patent cases in the USA</a>. (10:50)</li> <li>Bradley mentioned a <a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/441/when-patents-attack"><cite>This American Life</cite>, Episode 411, which discussed patents</a>. Show hosts/producers Laura Sydell and Alex Blumberg <a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/441/transcript">visit one of those &ldquo;empty-but-not&rdquo; office buildings in the Eastern District of Texas</a>. (11:18)</li> <li><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/jul/19/patrick-mchardy-gpl-enforcement/">Bradley and Karen wrote about Patrick McHardy's behavior back in July 2016</a> &mdash; Conservancy was the first to talk about it publicly. Bradley sought to prevent the &ldquo;compliance industrial complex&rdquo; from using knowledge of Patrick's behavior to unduly scare people. (13:10)</li> <li>Conservancy (with FSF) also published <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html">the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement</a> (15:10)</li> <li>The rest of <a href="https://www.netfilter.org/files/statement.pdf">the Netfilter team, except for Patrick McHardy</a>, endorsed the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html"> Principles</a>. (16:30)</li> <li>The VMware suit started 2015-03-05, and began before Patrick McHardy started his problematic behavior. While the VMware suit was working its way through the court, McHardy had filed many inappropriate lawsuits. (18:30)</li> <li>German court decisions are very rarely published, but thanks to hard work by everyone involved, the <a href="http://bombadil.infradead.org/~hch/vmware/2019_03_11_Urteil_OLG_HH.pdf">appeal decision</a>, and the <a href="http://bombadil.infradead.org/~hch/vmware/Urteil_2016-07-08.pdf">lower Court's decision</a> (the latter of which was also <a href="http://bombadil.infradead.org/~hch/vmware/Judgment_2016-07-08.pdf">translated into English</a>.) (27:30)</li> </ul> <h4>Segment 2 (33:01)</h4> <li>In the next episode, Karen will discuss the Kernel Enforcement Statement Additional Permission, and the Red Hat &ldquo;Cooperation Commitment&rdquo;. (35:40)</li> <hr width="80%"/> <p>Send feedback and comments on the cast to <a href="mailto:[email protected]">&lt;[email protected]&gt;</a>. You can keep in touch with <a href="https://faif.us">Free as in Freedom</a> on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by <a href="http://identi.ca/conservancy">following Conservancy on identi.ca</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/conservancy">and Twitter</a>.</p> <p>Free as in Freedom is produced by <a href="http://danlynch.org/blog/">Dan Lynch</a> of <a href="http://danlynch.org/">danlynch.org</a>. Theme music written and performed by <a href="http://www.miketarantino.com">Mike Tarantino</a> with <a href="http://www.charliepaxson.com">Charlie Paxson</a> on drums.</p> <p><a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png" hspace=10 /></a> The content of <span xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Sound" rel="dc:type">this audcast</span>, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the <a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0)</a>. </p>