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by kogepathic
82 days ago
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> That sounds like what Software Freedom Conservancy would call a GPL violation Sure, it is. So what? Have you got 200k for lawyers and years of your life to spend in court fighting over it? I have personally contacted the SFC with ample evidence of deliberate and wilful GPL violations, such as providing a written offer for source code and then ignoring or flat out refusing requests for the source code. The SFC has acknowledged the vendors are violating the spirit and letter of the GPL. Nothing happens. The SFC is one organisation with limited resources, FOSS developers don't want to spend their time in court, they'd rather develop software. Vendors know 9 times out of 10 they will get away with the GPL violation scot-free. It's fine to put on your rose colored glasses and pretend GPL forces companies to release source code. Reality is, the vendors have a larger marketing budget than the entire SFC endowment and the vendor's legal team is happy to tar-pit requests ad infinitum. |
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If the SFC lawsuit against Vizio succeeds, then there will be another option; since yourself and others are third-party beneficiaries of the contract embodied in the GPL between Linux kernel developers and hardware vendors that ship Linux; start a class action with other users of the hardware where GPL violations are present, and sue for GPL compliance instead of money. The lawyers will get their legal costs presumably and the users should get source code. Probably some law firms would take this on just for the legal costs, especially if the Vizio precedent makes it easy to win future cases.
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
PS: I don't think SFC have an endowment, they are just directly funded by people who support their goals.