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Question: if I sell my old Visio TV that violates the GPL, am I now also in violation of the license since I’m redistributing it?
Question: if I sell my old Visio TV that violates the GPL, am I now also in violation of the license since I’m redistributing it?
Even if the argument could be made, there would be no practical way to enforce it. It’s not like Disney is breathing down my neck if I “redistribute” their IP by getting paid $50 to dress up in a Mickey Mouse costume for a kids birthday party.
An especially novel aspect of this lawsuit, quoting the press release: > This approach makes it the first legal case that focuses on the rights of individual consumers as third-party beneficiaries of the GPL. > “That’s what makes this litigation unique and historic in terms of defending consumer rights,” says Karen M. Sandler, the organization’s executive director. In the past, GPL enforcement has been a cause of act…
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8. Termination.
You would think that if Vizio was hijacking code from GPL'd sources, their firmware on TVs would be better.
An especially novel aspect of this lawsuit, quoting the press release: > This approach makes it the first legal case that focuses on the rights of individual consumers as third-party beneficiaries of the GPL. > “That’s what makes this litigation unique and historic in terms of defending consumer rights,” says Karen M. Sandler, the organization’s executive director. In the past, GPL enforcement has been a cause of act…
Gplv2 violations are widespread, we need much much more enforcement and more copyleft software, and this could be a huge win. Free software's main purpose should not be to be proprietarized, too much of it now is a group effort among companies to more efficiently lure users to trade their freedom for functionality.
Often they don't have more functionality, just actual marketing and discoverability.
Question: if I sell my old Visio TV that violates the GPL, am I now also in violation of the license since I’m redistributing it?
Yes absolutely. You would be redistributing the software with the TV. That said, I can't imagine anyone would actually file a lawsuit in a situation like this. More worrying is whether Costco and Walmart could be sued under this theory. Vizio sells very few TVs directly.
For the purposes of only this context, in which we are deliberating who is infringing on the GPL software blah blah, Vizio sells all of their televisions directly. The act happens when Vizio is paid for the product and never again. With very few exceptions, everyone with a stake in the software on that television loses their rights completely once the television is legally sold to a distributor. Nobody from then on is liable for the licensing structure of the software; in the eyes of the (American) law, the television is now a “thing” to dispose of as you wish and no more. That is impactful to both trademark and copyright law but doesn’t necessarily speak to, say, reverse engineering (i.e., DMCA).
The scenarios you’re describing aren’t hypothetical and routinely happen in commerce, and they are well-trodden ground legally. If they went the way you’re theorizing, too, you’d never be able to legally sell or loan a book to a friend. Your ability to do that is the exact subject you’re discussing.
This looks to be a major change in the legal strategy behind GPL. In the past the focus has been on copyright claims by copyright holders, but as recent cases has shown in Germany and France, those has faced some rather strange setbacks. Germany don't seem to want to recognize copyright holders that only contributed a part of a larger work, which is basically all copyright holders for larger FOSS projects. In France…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gplv2 violations are widespread, we need much much more enforcement and more copyleft software, and this could be a huge win. Free software's main purpose should not be to be proprietarized, too much of it now is a group effort among companies to more efficiently lure users to trade their freedom for functionality.
It would be nice if perma-locked bootloaders were illegal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also, the requirement to allow software reinstall is there even in GPLv2. >> a key reason that the GPLv2 was created, is the software freedom to reinstall a modified version. Would that mean e.g. Apple is breaking the GPL by including GPLv2 components in iOS and not letting me reinstall modified versions of those components on my iPhone?
Which GPL components are there in iOS?
Edit: Ohhh, I think they might all be lgpl. Or, one is for libstdc++ but it mentions some special exemption?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It just drives more companies to be more careful about their license. My company has for years banned any GPL3 code on devices we ship. If GPL2 is suddenly found more restrictive than we expected we will ban that too. FreeBSD/NetBSD will be the winner there, along with other projects. We don't contribute much, but we already consider license before we contribute back - and if we can't get GPL code we will make the ch…
The point of copyleft licenses is to make it hard to make proprietary software and easy to make free software. It sounds like they're working as intended. My understanding is that this suit is partly on the grounds of Visio not releasing modifications to copylefted code. The MPL and LGPL have the same requirements; is not being able to use LGPL, GPL, AGPL, MPL, or CeCILL-licensed software really harder than complianc…