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The Linux Foundation announced that VMware has become a Silver member of the Foundation,

According to their site , The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, the LF sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux

VMware’s participation in the Linux community includes the contribution of the Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), a paravirtualization interface as an open specification, and subsequent collaboration with the Linux kernel community and others in the development of a source-level paravirtualization interface (paravirt-ops) for the Linux kernel

According to Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “Linux is a natural platform for virtualization and cloud computing. VMware is obviously a leader in that field and a leading ISV who has embraced the Linux platform,”

Over at the Open Road , Matt Assay responds with questions around the alleged GPL violations VMWare still has to resolve.

In VentureCake’s the VMWare House Of Cards there is a lengthy discussion is about whether vmkernel, a proprietary blob that can only be loaded by a Linux kernel, can be considered a derived work of Linux.

It’s not a new discussion but hopefully with VMWare joining the Linux Foundation it’s one that will end soon , with clarity, and License compliance. Ass Matt notes

VMware can’t hope to cozy up to Linux and its community without participating on the
principles of transparency and trust. At present, it has shown little of the former
and has yet to earn much of the latter

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