On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 10:10, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> > Now this does bring a new issue to mind - because something GPL is being
> > distributed inside a proprietary piece of technology, is the whole now a
> > derivative product, thus making the virtualization technology also
> > subject to the GPL? In other words, does distributing a Linux distro in
> > a VM force you to also distribute the VM as GPL? I don't believe this to
> > be the case - but it could be a grey area...
>
> That is a much deeper question, a question you'll need to ask the FSF
> about, vmware about or get your own expert legal opinion to comment
> on. Hopefully Vmware took the time to ask the FSF about this issue
> before opening up their images catelog to include linux. I suspect
> there isn't an issue here, but I'd much rather avoid parsing the
> legality of how the GPL interacts with vmplayer as part of a user
> oriented mailinglist. I don't think we are going to get an appropriate
> expert opinion on the matter here.
I'm not an expert, but I have to think that the ability to back
up a virtual machine and restore onto physical hardware would
demonstrate clearly that it is 'mere aggregration' with the
other work and no dependency or derivation is involved. And
even if there were, the vmplayer code would fit into the
special exception under section 3 of the GPL permitting components
of the operating system where the program runs to be used without
enforcing GPL compliance on them.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
