February 29, 2016
Last Thursday, 24 February 2016, a hearing was held in Berlin regarding Christoph Hellwig's case against VMware regarding infringement of his Linux copyrights. Our own Bradley M. Kuhn and world-famous Linux developer and GPL enforcer Harald Welte both posted their thoughts regarding the hearing. Welte attended the hearing as an observer and reports first-hand on what he saw and heard.
This marks another important step forward in adjudicating the combined works copyright issue regarding the GPL. On this matter, Software Freedom Conservancy enforced the Linux copyrights held by Conservancy and its GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers against VMware for nearly five years. Christoph Hellwig sought compliance from VMware throughout 2014 in a separate action in Germany, and filed a lawsuit there in March 2015. Conservancy funds Christoph's legal costs for this suit. More information about the lawsuit and its policy implications for copyleft can be found on the copyleft compliance area of Conservancy's website.