What are the licensing terms for the VMWare Tools for Linux?

[FooBarWidget]

I am maintaining an open source project which provides Linux virtual machines for use in development through Vagrant. The project's website is https://github.com/phusion/open-vagrant-boxes. This project provides both VirtualBox virtual machines and VMWare virtual machines. The VMWare virtual machines should come with the VMWare Tools preinstalled.

Because these virtual machines must be compatible with Docker, they must come with Linux kernel 3.8. Unfortunately, the VMWare Tools as provided by VMWare Fusion 5 (which is the version that I have) do not install correctly against Linux kernel 3.8, so I have to patch it. This brings me to my questions:

- What are the licensing terms for the VMWare Tools? I cannot find a license file inside the archive.

- Is it allowed to patch the tools?

- Is it allowed to redistribute the VMWare Tools archive file? Being allowed to will make automated installation much easier.

- Who should I ask? I cannot find an obvious contact address at VMWare Inc for this question.

[tjsoftworks]

Awesome work FooBarWidget....

Glad you are working this thru..... someones got to do it. While I'm not with VMWare, I think that a call to support line will probably get you pointed to an answer fair efficiently.... I'd give them a call personally  - 877 486 9273

[wila]

Hi,

Maybe try using open-vm-tools package instead?

It is supplied by VMware for these type of scenarios and is what you normally find installed on pre installed vmware images.

--

Wil

[FooBarWidget]

Hm, I was under the impression that open-vm-tools are old and outdated. The website hasn't been updated since 2010. But upon further inspection it seems that they've been making regular releases even in recent times. I'll check it out, thanks for the tip.

[wila]

It is certainly not outdated. This is what distributions bundle for VMware host support as well.

For example, on a Ubuntu trusty alfa 2 (14.04) VM I can install this simply via apt-get.

~$ sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools
[sudo] password for xxxxxxx: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  dkms ethtool fakeroot libdumbnet1 libfakeroot open-vm-tools-dkms zerofree
Suggested packages:
  dpkg-dev debhelper open-vm-tools-desktop
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  dkms ethtool fakeroot libdumbnet1 libfakeroot open-vm-tools
  open-vm-tools-dkms zerofree
0 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 11 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,149 kB of archives.
After this operation, 9,823 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.

$ uname -a
Linux ubuntu 3.13.0-5-generic #20-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jan 20 19:56:38 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

It's the default way of getting new kernel support as it is always kept up to date with the kernel.

It is however not blessed by VMware support, they do not provide free support on the community available version of VMware Tools.

But you can be sure that everybody involved will do their best to make sure it all works smoothly.

You are correct about the dated text on the website, I'll see if I can bring that to somebodies attention.

--

Wil

[FooBarWidget]

Unfortunately, the open-vm-tools provided by Ubuntu 12.04 don't work with the backported 3.8 kernel, so I still have to use (a more up to date) VMWare Tools.

I ended up writing scripts that automatically download a specific, recent version of VMWare Tools. This should solve the licensing issues.

[wila]

A "can do" attitude, I do like that and yes that is one way to work around licensing issues.

Not sure if it really solves the issue, as that is something only VMware lawyers can tell you, but in my books it does work around it.

It probably helps if the user has to "OK" the licensing part while installing.

Thanks for the feedback, I've reported the part about the site looking like the open-vm-tools project has become inactive.

FWIW, I just did a little more digging on the site here and bumped into this: VMware End User License Agreement | United States which you get if you click on VMware Fusion on this page: Download EULA and point 2.5 appears to grant you the license (my legalese isn't that great so pardon me if I'm misreading it)

2.5 VMware Tools.You may distribute the VMware Tools (whether or not as part of the Virtual Machine You create with the Software) to third parties solely when installed in a Guest Operating System to enhance its performance and functionality when running in a Virtual Machine, provided that You will be fully responsible for such third parties’ compliance with the terms and conditions of this EULA, and any breach of this EULA by any such third party shall be deemed to be a breach of this EULA by You.

--

Wil