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If this strategy becomes validated by this case, it means that any organisation can bring GPL compliance lawsuits. Hopefully that leads to companies noting their increased potential for liability by multiple less scrupulous actors than SFC and spontaneously coming into compliance.
The alternative is that they will decide that GPL software is not worth the legal risk, and ban its use.
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Generally speaking, GPL can't be enforced by users due to selftermination clause. And when GPL terminates itself, you can't enforce it. For user enforcement we need a license that doesn't terminate itself. --- 8. Termination. You may not propagate or modify a covered work except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to propagate or modify it is void, and will automatically terminate your rig…
I guess the interesting thing here is if they are willing to use that as an argument. "You can't sue us because we don't have a license!" I imagine that would make a following case by the actual copyright holders really easy to win.
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.
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This would be an absolutely crazy outcome if this turned out to be a result. I think Vizio (who I have no love for) would get a HUGE number of opens source folks behind them. We need to look at what developers believed GPLv2 required and what it did not. The whole Tivo issue came about because GPLv2 does NOT require that a developer ALSO make it so that others can use HARDWARE they create any way they want. Linus (wh…
> The whole Tivo issue came about because GPLv2 does NOT require that a developer ALSO make it so that others can use HARDWARE they create any way they want. This also used to be my understanding, but it is simply wrong. If you read the article posted by GP, from the lawyer who actually pursued the FSF's case against TiVo, the facts are different. TiVo started by bot providing source code at all, and then had some li…
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