Is the contract restricted to the buyers, or to the "any 3rd party" of the GPL?

Posted Jan 28, 2026 1:42 UTC (Wed) by developer122 (guest, #152928)
In reply to: Is the contract restricted to the buyers, or to the "any 3rd party" of the GPL? by paulj
Parent article: SFC v. VIZIO: who can enforce the GPL?

You're conflating two different things.

There is the contract describing the sale of the TV ("I give you money and you give me a TV") and the completely different *potential* contract talked about here: "I offer to give you the source code; I accept your offer of source code." The latter is the one the judge is considering, on the basis that there was a written offer for source code buried in the TV's menu.

One of the possibilities discussed in the article is that if it turns out an offer needs to be made before ordinary people can form the latter kind contract (and be able to sue over it), we end up right back where we started. Companies might willfully withhold source *and* not make a written offer, and only authors could sue them for it because ordinary people would need an offer to accept in order to later be able to sue for the code.

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Not making a source code offer

Posted Jan 28, 2026 12:10 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

The risk of not making a source code offer, when it's common practice and clearly required by the license, is that you'll find yourself deemed to be a "wilful infringer", with associated higher penalties and lower burden of proof on the copyright holder (since the copyright holder now just has to prove infringement, not damages).

It would be quite hard for a company to argue that it did not know that the GPL required source code or an offer thereof nowadays, or to argue that it did not know that Linux was under the GPL, and not free to redistribute as a binary without source. But it's easy for a company to argue that it wasn't wilful infringement if it tried to comply, but turned out unable to do so when called on it.

Not making a source code offer

Posted Jan 28, 2026 13:00 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And while copyright infringement is (aiui) a civil infringement in the US, under English law I think it's treated like trespass. As such, if you don't know you're infringing or have good grounds to believe "everything will be all right", it's a civil matter. If you "knew or should have known" permission would be refused, it becomes a criminal matter.

"everything will be alright" - things like postie doesn't ask permission to walk on your driveway because he assumes you want to get your post. You don't ask your friends for permission before you go round their house because you assume they'll say "come in!".

Whereas the signs "Trespassers will be prosecuted" are stating quite clearly that things *won't* be "all right", and placing you on notice that trespass will be treated as a criminal matter.

Cheers,
Wol