Software Freedom Conservancy Wins Big Step Forward For Open-Source Rights

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a non-profit organization that promotes open-source software and defends the free software General Public License (GPL), recently sued major TV vendor Vizio for abusing the GPL with its Linux-based SmartCast OS. Vizio replied that the SFC had no right to ask for the source code. On May 13, however, the SFC succeeded in federal court with its motion to have its lawsuit against Vizio remanded back to Superior Court in Orange County, CA.

Doesn't sound like that big a deal? Think again. The important part of the decision by U.S. District Court Judge Josephine L. Staton stated that SFC's claim "that the [GPLv2] enforcement of 'an additional contractual promise separate and distinct from any rights provided by the copyright laws' amounts to an 'extra element,' and therefore, SFC's claims are not preempted." Karen M. Sandler, SFC's executive director, explained, "The ruling is a watershed moment in the history of copyleft licensing. This ruling shows that the GPL agreements function both as copyright licenses and as a contractual agreement." Sandler added that even in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) legal community people argue incorrectly that the GPL and other copyleft licenses only function as copyright licenses. This decision clearly states that the GPL also acts as a contract. Further, this decision makes it the first case to show individual consumers have rights to the source code as third-party beneficiaries of the GPL.

It's a subset

[raymorris]

A contract is a deal in which each party agrees so do something / give something, on the condition that the other party does whatever is specified in the agreement.

A copyright license is a deal in which one party agrees to allow distribution, on the condition that the other party does whatever is specified in the license - pay money, redistribute source, whatever.

Thus a deal (contract) allowing distribution under copyright, also known as a license, is a TYPE of contract.

Saying "it's both a license and a con

Re:

[The Evil Atheist]

Unfortunately, laws aren't maths.

That's why tomatoes are vegetables, and carrots are fruits.

Lawyers sometimes need to get explicit rulings into the body of case law to set a precedent. They can't rely on other lawyers and judges to figure out the obvious.

Third party beneficiary error

[DRJlaw]

Further, this decision makes it the first case to show individual consumers have rights to the source code as third-party beneficiaries of the GPL.

It literally does not. Slip opinion page 6, footnote says "The Court here determines only that the claim is not preempted; whether SFC can successfully show it is a third-party beneficiary of the GPL Agreements is a question of state law that is not before this Court."

Are consumers (the SFC in this instance) third parties with a right to specific performance? Who knows at this point. This decision did not decide that, and this case has not decided that yet. This was just a ruling concerning jurisdiction and venue, not the merits of the case.

Free Software Rights

[drinkypoo]

This doesn't apply to mere Open Source. It applies to Free Software, specifically, in the form of the GPL. Open Source and Free Software are not the same thing.

Companies using GPL-code liable for user support?

[lpq]

So any end user using a product that includes GPL code can ask for the full source code of such a product. I wonder about the costs of compliance and maintaining a public site where the full product code would available for download. I don't know if providing full downloadable source is trivial and would cost nothing, or if this is a "no-op" because companies using open-source already have everything publicly available (?). Might providing full source incur any new costs like sufficient bandwidth for hos

Re:

[AnonymousNoel]

Compliance could be zero cost, as you could publish the code to Github, for free.

Companies may prefer to host it themselves, e.g. to restrict downloads to customers only. Even that is unlikely to be a significant cost, as hosting is cheap and most clients won't be interested in the source, so bandwidth is unlikely to be stretched.

Re:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... unless Vizio have made some fantastic, extraodevicerdinary contributions to those projects this whole thing is a non-story. They'll just clone the repos of those projects under https://github.com/vizio [github.com] or whatever and point the users at that. Job done.

If they made driver modifications to support their hardware you'll get that, too. Ditto if their hardware includes custom devices and they built drivers for them by modifying an existing GPLed driver for something else. That is a substantial leg up to wr

Re:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

That is a substantial leg up to writing replacement code that will actually work on their hardware (assuming you can manage to get it loaded.)

Also to writing add-in code: You'll be able to see what, if any, oddities they tweaked into the module or application interfaces.

Re:

[exomondo]

If they made driver modifications to support their hardware you'll get that, too.

Not necessarily, you can use proprietary drivers with the linux kernel. So if they use a proprietary SoC (pretty sure they use MediaTek) you won't get the souce code for its driver(s).

Ditto if their hardware includes custom devices and they built drivers for them by modifying an existing GPLed driver for something else. That is a substantial leg up to writing replacement code that will actually work on their hardware (assuming you can manage to get it loaded.)

Given the amount of smart TV manufacturers out there using Linux as their underlying OS and the contributions released I'd say the OP is right. For example what awesome stuff came out of LG, Samsung, Sony, etc complying with the GPL?

Do't understand

[ceg97]

What is the bottom line here? I can't follow the money.

Re:

[passionplay]

You wrote code. You used the GPL so that everyone can benefit by seeing the updates to your code and seeing the code for applications that use your code (publish code for derivative works). GPL insists that no one can 1) take away your copyright - you own it, 2) any derivative software must be published so everyone can see what was done and how it si used as well as the code for the application that uses your code. This means, anyone using your code cannot hide their code and must publish to all recipients

Re:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

2) any derivative software must be published so everyone can see what was done and how it si used as well as the code for the application that uses your code. This means, anyone using your code cannot hide their code and must publish to all recipients of the binary having used your code. ... who request it.

The biggest benefit - no security through obscurity and bugs are found by a huge set of eyes.

An additional benefit is that you can fix the code ON A MACHINE YOU OWN THAT HAS VENDOR CHANGES TO THE CODE wit

Re:

[exomondo]

An additional benefit is that you can fix the code ON A MACHINE YOU OWN THAT HAS VENDOR CHANGES TO THE CODE

That's a huge misrepresentation here, it's only a guarantee with the GPLv3. You can't, for example, modify the code on your Tivo or your Playstation or your iPhone despite them all using open source software and releasing that software. There is a term for this, it's called Tivoization [wikipedia.org] and it's actually something that the overwhelming majority of the community see as a good thing, even Linus Torvalds himself thinks Tivoization is good. This is why relatively very few projects are GPLv3.

The GCC can be used t