California District Court ruled preliminary decision in the legal proceedings initiated by the human rights organization Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) against Vizio, accused of failure to comply with the requirements of the GPL license when distributing firmware for smart TVs based on the SmartCast platform. The court ruled that Vizio must make the source code available in a form that allows third parties to download and modify the code. At the same time, the court accepted the petition of Vizio and agreed that the use of the GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 licenses does not provide grounds for requiring the manufacturer to provide the information necessary to install a modified version of the firmware on a user-owned TV.
A manufacturer using projects under copyleft licenses in its products is required to provide the source code, including the code of derivative works. In addition, the SFC insisted that the GPL requirement for the ability to modify a product implies that the manufacturer provides the information necessary to install modified GPL components of the firmware (for example, providing keys for flashing).
Without such information, the user can independently correct errors, add new features and remove unnecessary functionality, but is not able to take advantage of the result. You may need to make changes to protect your privacy, fix problems in-house that the manufacturer refuses to fix, and extend the life of the device after it ends official support.
The court ordered Vizio to provide code, including build and installation scripts, but did not require it to provide the means to reinstall the modified components on the TV. It is understood that the user can modify the source code for another application or use it in other programs, but the manufacturer is not obliged to provide tools to replace it on the device on which the code was originally used.
Linus Torvalds joined the discussion of the court decision , in the opinion of which both sides showed themselves to be on the bad side and the only one The judge turned out to be a competent participant in the proceedings. Vizio is wrong because it used Linux without