Yes, I have. The isos contain everything needed to build all the open source components used for that version of the suite

But you still made factual claims, based merely on the diagram

Wrong.

BusyBox is part of the source code ISO's on their website. Don't even need a login to grab them.

Which is the bogus claim, as anyone who's worked with ESXi and developing drivers for it can testify(which I have done). ESX, otoh, ran sort of parallell with the Linux kernel, but ESX was discontinued years ago.

But with ESXi, the linux kernel runs on top of the hypervisor.

No, the diagram is very simplified, only showing 3 layers, and that the alleged Linux kernel and ESXi hypervisor kernel occupy kernel space. It is very disingenious, since ESXi is bare metal and stand-alone, unlike ESX, which was discontinued years ago. In fact, when reading the link to mailing lists someone in the thread posted, many of the complaints are about ESX, and invalid for ESXi.

In fact, the entire situation smells fishy.... I wonder if they are trying to appropriate VMware code somehow to improve Xen code.

And GPL is very much "what's yours is mine and what's mine also makes yours mine"

But, ESX is not ESXi. ESXi is very different from ESX(and ESX was discontinued years ago). If they are really suing VMWare over ESXi but based on arguments about ESX, then it only looks like an ideology-based extortion-via-lawsuit attempt.

The entire thing is highly confusing, since ESXi tossed out the Linux kernel components from the hypervisor and runs on bare metal since 4.1(released in july 2010), and ESX, which is not the same thing as ESXi . And BusyBox is not a part of the kernel. Also, the source code for the Open Source components for ESXi 5 have been available for download since the start. So, judging by that technical FAQ, is their argument "You share kernel space with GPL'd stuff, now hand us the goodies or we'll sue you!"?. (Which wouldn't surprise me, given the religious zealotry behind GPL which can easily go into "What's yours is mine, and what's mine makes yours mine too")

Red Hat have made noises in that direction via support channels the last few years, and an argument has been made that their support techs should count as official users on the systems, for GPL reasons. Needless to say, some healthcare IT administrators, defense contractors, police IT etc weren't exactly thrilled by that argument, and quite a few of those have now either swapped to CentOS and do all support in-house, or dumped anything originating from Red Hat and either swap to another distro family or roll their own.

Actually, that's exactly what I had in mind :p

(and you forgot to consider the fact that the spiders would be on both meth and LSD, and there's 8 of the spiders at the same time :p )

Source 2 will work.... But working with it looks like it'll only be a slightly less painful experience than Source

Actually, enough details of Source 2 have been unveiled to start making some judgements. From what I've seen, it's the same usual Valve clusterfuck under the hood, meaning bugs bugs bugs and cheat friendly has hell, a workflow that is convoluted to the point that 8 spiders on LSD and meth in zero-grav can't create a bigger mess....

Actually, you are about a year and a half to two out of date with some of your assertions:

The leadership HAS changed. For example, the CEO was ousted, and the senior legal counsel, responsible for the excessive, almost scientology-like IP protection, went out the hard way back in august 2013. Since then, the climate HAS changed: There have been more licenses for computer games based on their IP, mod makers no longer get instant threatening C&D letters. I've made some tilesets for 40k/Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch use, and I actually got a very polite mail about 8 months ago, essentially saying they didn't mind, as long as I didn't try to make money from it. A WH fantasy mod for the Total War series has, to my knowledge, not been harassed after the senior legal counsel was fired, despite Creative Assembly having received a license for Warhammer Fantasy.

Right now, GW ARE changing: For example, the new Warhammer Fantasy that is in the works is apparently going back to older roots, with less hard restrictions on units, instead going back to the old percentage allocations(At least x% points on troops, at most y% points on characters, that kind of thing), as well as going towards more skirmish type(I wonder if they finally dumped Nigel fucking Stillmann, the chief asshole behind the move to put as many and as large units as possible on the table... A bit like how Gav Thorpe and Ian Pickstock helped fuck up WH40k 3rd ed and onwards...)

Also, in terms of models, what it looks like, according to some people who are in the pipeline, is that GW are changing focus towards Forge World, and possibly even customized miniatures, and possibly just selling cad files etc for basic troops.

Wind resistance, real slopes, fighting slippery surfaces, absorbing shocks and bumps, changing weather conditions, maintaining your concentration to a far sharper degree than a sim demands all cause you to burn more energy than any simulator you use.

It's why you see so many gym stars perform like shit when facing the real thing. Or why iRacing(a pretty good racing simulator) stars, who outperform real racing drivers in the sim, are like 20 seconds behind the same racing drivers when placed in a real racing car, even after 2 weeks of training in the real car.

I don't know, it could be worse.... There could have been sizeable amounts of elemental fluorine and chlorine too..... And other very nasty things...

"- If there's a problem,
                  - your own developpers will be pulling out their hair because it's not compliant to their way of working (or worse unreadable spaghetti code)
                  - no garantees, you've already validated and payed the freelancer, yer on yer own."

I feel that I have to comment here, from my experience.

As part of my contracts, I keep specifically to their code templates, variable naming etc, as long as it doesn't affect reliability/security/safety, and that's also laid out in the terms of the contract.

In terms of guarantees, many of us specialists who don't work on run-of-the-mill contracts have support contracts attached to our work.