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<h1>Frequently Asked Questions about Christoph Hellwig's VMware Lawsuit</h1>

<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

  &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 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'

   contributions.</dd>

  <dt id="court-documents">Are the court documents released?</dt>

  <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.  Unfortunately, VMware has explicitly asked for the

  filings not to be published.   Accordingly, Conservancy itself has not

  even been able to review VMware's statement of defense nor Christoph's

  response to that statement of defense.</dd>

  <dt id="funding">Who's funding this lawsuit?</dt>

  <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="/copyleft-compliance/about.html">GPL Compliance

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

  <dt id="combined-and-derivative-works">Is this the Great Test Case of Combined / Derivative Works?</dt>