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<h1>Frequently Asked Questions about Christoph Hellwig's VMware Lawsuit</h1>
<p><strong>Update 2019-04-02:</strong> Please
see <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/">this
announcement regarding conclusion of the VMware suit in Germany</a>. Since the suit has
concluded, any funds you donate here will support our ongoing compliance efforts. The
remaining material below is left as it was before that announcement:</p>
<p>Conservancy maintains this
<abbr title="Frequently Asked Questions">FAQ</abbr> list regarding
<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
<info@sfconservancy.org></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 among the 1,340 developers involved in that release.
Christoph also ranks 4th among those who have reviewed third-party source
code, and he has tirelessly corrected and commented on other developers'