<a href="/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">Christoph Hellwig's lawsuit against VMware

  in Germany over alleged GPL violations on Linux</a> as a service to the

  Free Software community, and in particular, the copyleft community.  Conservancy

  realizes this lawsuit generates many questions and interest

  from the community.  Legal counsel (both Conservancy's own, and

  Christoph's lawyer, Till Jaeger) correctly advise us to limit our public

  comments regarding specific details of the case while litigation remains

  pending in court.  Nevertheless, Conservancy, as a

  non-profit charity serving the public good, seeks to be as transparent as

  possible.  If you have additional questions you'd like to see answered

  here, please <a href="mailto:info@sfconservancy.org">email

  &lt;info@sfconservancy.org&gt;</a>, but understand that we may often need

  to answer: <q>We cannot comment on this while litigation is pending</q>.</p>

<dl>

  <dt>Who is the Plaintiff in the lawsuit?</dt>

  <dd>Christoph is one of most active developers of the Linux kernel. He has

   contributed 279.653 lines of code to the latest Linux 3.19 kernel, and

   thus ranks 20th amongst the 1,340 developers involved in that release.

   Christoph also ranks 4th among those who have reviewed third-party source

   code, tirelessly corrected and commented on other developers'

   contributions.</dd>

  <dd>Not currently.  Court proceedings are not public by default in Germany

  (unlike in the USA).  Conservancy will continue to update this FAQ with

  information that Conservancy knows about the case.  We would all also

  welcome an agreement with VMware whereby both sides would agree to publish

  all Court documents. </dd>

  <dd>Conservancy has engaged in a grant agreement with Christoph Hellwig for

  the purposes of pursuing this specific legal action in Germany.

  Conservancy is funding this legal action specifically as part of

  Conservancy's program activity in

  its <a href="/linux-compliance/about.html">GPL Compliance

  Project for Linux Developers</a>.</dd>

  <dt>Is this the Great Test Case of Combined / Derivative Works?</dt>

  <dd>This case is specifically regarding a combined work that VMware

  allegedly created by combining their own code (“vmkernel”) with

  portions of Linux's code, which was licensed only under GPLv2.  As such,

  this, to our knowledge, marks the first time an enforcement case is

  exclusively focused on this type of legal question relating to GPL.

  However, there are so many different ways to make combined and/or

  derivative works that are covered by GPL that no single case could possibly

  include all such issues. </dd>

  <dt>Why must you file a lawsuit?  Isn't there any other way to convince

    VMware to comply with GPL?</dt>

  <dd><p>Neither Conservancy nor Christoph takes this action lightly nor without

  exhausting every other possible alternative first.  This lawsuit is the