ambiguity [LWN.net]

ambiguity

Posted Dec 26, 2025 13:38 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: ambiguity by sashal
Parent article: A partial ruling in the Vizio GPL suit

I agree that if the SFC had meant “the Program” in the GPL sense, they would have done better to capitalise the P. OTOH, I haven't seen the SFC's original submission, and whether there was a “p” or a “P” in the original submission that was then (mis?)quoted by Vizio in their motion or the court in its summary judgement should be checked.

As far as the word “features” go, a Program obviously has features even if the GPL doesn't say so explicitly. The GPL is – implicitly – all about adding new features to the Program or changing the ones that are already there. The expectation on the part of the GPL is that if you take the TV set's Linux kernel source code as provided by Vizio under the GPL, recompile it, and deploy it to the TV set (which according to the GPL you should be able to do), it should have the features of a Linux kernel. The features of the TV set as a whole are another concern - in particular, whether the proprietary TV application on the TV likes your self-compiled Linux kernel enough to make the TV set as a whole work just as it would with the kernel binary provided by Vizio is a different question entirely that the GPL does not address.

Finally, the question remains why the SFC didn't clarify its position vis-à-vis the scope of the word “program” to the court before the summary judgment. The SFC has been around long enough to be aware that the GPL can't regulate the behaviour of non-GPL code that happens to be on the same TV set (after all they argue exactly that in their after-the-fact blog post), so the sensible thing would have been to make it unambiguously clear earlier in the process that this is indeed not what they are after.

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ambiguity

Posted Dec 26, 2025 13:50 UTC (Fri) by sashal (✭ supporter ✭, #81842) [Link]

Ack. The SFC should really have been clearer on this from the beginning.

The judge has also mentioned it in his ruling:

> Plaintiff’s interrogatory response can be reasonably construed to include the issue raised in the motion.
> Moreover, Plaintiff has chosen to oppose the motion on the merits rather than concede the issue of duty
> raised in the motion, indicating Plaintiff alleges the disputed duty applies to Defendant. Moreover,
> Defendant cites paragraphs 116 and 118 of Plaintiff’s FAC and the testimony of Plaintiff’s witnesses
> which have asserted the existence of such a duty.

Which doesn't stop SFC from writing "Unfortunately, Vizio's motion is likely to confuse the public" in their blog post, even though the ones causing this confusion are the SFC themselves.