FSFE supports Hellwig's GPL compliance lawsuit
FSFE welcomes the action which Christoph Hellwig and the Software Freedom Conservancy are taking to bring VMware into compliance with the GNU General Public License.
FSFE's president Karsten Gerloff comments: "Free Software is a public resource, and it is governed by legal rules and social norms. Anyone who draws on this resource without respecting those rules and norms does damage to the community at large. The great majority of such problems are successfully resolved through dialogue and goodwill. It is only when dialogue fails that legal steps become necessary in order to protect this resource which we all share.
While FSFE regrets that this lawsuit has arisen, we believe that safeguarding Free Software against those who try to appropriate for themselves what belongs to us all is of the utmost importance.