LWN: Comments on "SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations"

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

allenwrench1 — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 20:46:53 +0000

I think they will have to dish it out in contract court than copyright court

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

ghane — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 11:54:36 +0000

FYI, in case you wish to add to your calendar. The next significant date is 25 Apr 2022, for the Case Management Conference, where administrative and scheduling issues will be discussed.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

Wol — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 12:52:24 +0000

You don't even need to host downloads. Just use a half-way decent VCS for internal development, and mirror it on the net. Git*** would be perfect.

You just need to make sure your engineering process tags EVERY release, both in the release and in the VCS. Then it's a simple matter of dealing with requests by (a) asking customers what the release tag of their software is, and (b) pointing them at git*** to "download that tag".

Of course, that process needs to work ...

(And it has the side effect that interested parties like mjg might go through your work and take on board the work of upstreaming it for you! They might not, too, of course ...)

Cheers,
Wol

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

tao — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 09:21:29 +0000

Sure, you need to host downloads. But most hardware already have an infrastructure in place for downloading documentation or firmware updates, so they already have some form of hosting service. Also, almost every company already have websites...

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

pabs — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 05:10:48 +0000

They do ask for financial compensation for the costs of filing the lawsuit (including lawyers fees and I guess employee time) as well as potentially other relief:

COMPLAINT - 25

9 e. For costs of suit incurred herein;
10 f. For attorney's fees to the extent authorized by law; and
11 g. For such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

atai — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 21:49:15 +0000

The GPL suit seems to have little if anything to do with this--SFC is not even asking for financial penalty.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

zdzichu — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 20:27:07 +0000

Why it's "impossible" to release someone's proprietary code under GPL, while distributing GPL binaries without source code isn't? It is exactly the same offence - breaking the license.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

excors — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 18:29:19 +0000

> Every time I visit a Microsoft website, it *always* insists on giving me the Spanish version of the website. It's like they didn't even read the RFCs.

I think the problem with many forms of content negotiation is that the rules in the standard are not a stable equilibrium. Maybe the most popular web browser sends a buggy Accept header in a certain OS configuration, and a web site follows the rules but its users complain that they're receiving a language they can't read, so the web site has to break the rules to get decent behaviour. But maybe the site didn't test it on other browsers in all language configurations, so now those browsers' users can't read the site, and the browser developers have to break the rules to make the site readable before all their users switch to the 'working' browser. Then repeat back and forth for a couple of decades, until eventually it settles into a stable state that has little resemblance to the original standard and you're lucky if someone reverse-engineers and documents it.

Everyone involved may know perfectly well what the RFC says, but they can't implement the RFC correctly because it'll cause a significantly worse user experience.

There's also the "serious disadvantages" mentioned in the actual RFC (https://httpwg.org/specs/rfc7231.html#content.negotiation) - even if everyone followed the RFC perfectly, it wouldn't work very well. (See also https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Why_not_conneg justifying why HTML5 <video> doesn't do any negotiation over HTTP; the server just provides a list of all available formats and lets the browser decide.)

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

NYKevin — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 17:33:38 +0000

> One out of a long list of websites that insist to use the main language of the place you access it from, rather than one of your preferred languages.

Meh, I've seen worse. My browser sends the following Accept-Language header:

> en-US,en;q=0.9,es-US;q=0.8,es-MX;q=0.7,es;q=0.6

Translated into English, this means "I prefer English, but can understand Spanish if that's all you've got."

Every time I visit a Microsoft website, it *always* insists on giving me the Spanish version of the website. It's like they didn't even read the RFCs.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

rgmoore — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 16:06:20 +0000

In that case, the cost still exists, but I think you'll agree that it is derisory.

Only if you're actually following the rules about mixing GPL and proprietary code. It's quite possible that one reason companies don't want to obey the GPL is because they have been mixing GPL and proprietary code. That's annoying if it's your proprietary code, since the easiest route to GPL compliance is to release your proprietary stuff under the GPL, but it can be impossible if you're using someone else's proprietary code and don't have the right to release it under the GPL. I suppose not mixing code under incompatible licenses might be part of your professional standards, but if it is you'll find there are a lot of unprofessional shops out there.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

oldtomas — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 07:39:47 +0000

"There's a pretty clear cost of dealing with the GPL."

Of course, I agree. There is a cost.

Pizza (possibly) and me were making the tacit assumption that the developmment process is halfway up to professional standards: that you know which source the binaries you have "out there" come from (and via which build process). In that case, the cost still exists, but I think you'll agree that it is derisory.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

Cyberax — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 03:00:59 +0000

Sorry, meant to write MIPS. You're right, the early BCM-based devices were all MIPS32.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

joib — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 20:28:05 +0000

> Linksys devices provided probably the first readily-available platform for ARM experiments.

They did? I recall the WRT54G I had back in the day was MIPS, as was the follow-up 802.11n ath9k router I got. Current one is ARM, though.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

Cyberax — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 20:00:17 +0000

There were router-focused distributions even before WRT. The novelty of WRT was that it was very lightweight, so it could work on devices with few megabytes of flash and still provide a Web-based UI.

The other advantage was hardware. Back then embedded Linux was a radioactive wasteland with barely-supported vendor kernels that hard-coded all the devices. But you couldn't get them anyway, because development kits often cost $$$$ if they were available at all. Linksys devices provided probably the first readily-available platform for ARM experiments.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

JanC_ — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 18:35:53 +0000

This also means people who are travelling often get denied help/support because they get redirected to some page they can’t understand…

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

farnz — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 18:04:46 +0000

The documentation with my Roku stick (including the onboard help) all uses the no-language link.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

NYKevin — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 18:03:24 +0000

I was tacitly assuming that they put the en-us link in their documentation, and the no-language link only exists at all by accident (but search engines prefer the no-language link, because they assume it's the canonical version, or because the site has incorrectly annotated it as canonical). If that's not the case, then maybe they are in violation (I'm no lawyer), but it's a relatively small violation in the grand scheme of things.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

jebba — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 15:48:04 +0000

> misuse of open source software

Perhaps violating 17 U.S. Code § 501.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

rahulsundaram — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 15:39:34 +0000

> Also known as software piracy.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.en.html

"Owners use smear words such as “piracy” and “theft,” as well as expert terminology such as “intellectual property” and “damage,” to suggest a certain line of thinking to the public—a simplistic analogy between programs and physical objects."

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

jebba — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 15:10:02 +0000

> misuse of open source software

Also known as software piracy. If that is true, then they committed more criminal offenses too.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

mcatanzaro — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 13:56:51 +0000

> This is particularly relevant for the case at hand, since the Conservancy represents the developers of some of the software at hand. So shutting down the first law suit would directly provide evidence for a second.

They've already precluded this argument by claiming the opposite, so that won't happen.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

joib — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 11:26:35 +0000

> On the other hand, I've had arguments with people who claimed GPL enforcement will ultimately weaken free software adoption as vendors will increasingly switch to proprietary software instead. This claim was based on the WRT54GL case, apparently, but upon reading up on it, it seems like the outcome of that case was exactly the opposite of what the claim would be: the router continued to sell even 11 years after it was introduced, thanks to its open firmware ecosystem, benefiting both Linksys and the customers.

Yet on the other hand (or are we counting on feet already?) couldn't one argue that the WRT54 lawsuit kickstarted the DD-WRT and later openwrt projects, of which it appears at least a lightly skinned openwrt is the router OS of choice of many vendors? So Linksys may or may not have benefited in the end, but the entire ecosystem as a whole certainly did.

Mali + GPL

scientes — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 11:25:00 +0000

I am not attacking downstream users of the Mali driver. They are doing what is common (although it creates lots of work and madness for everyone involved—externalities to ARM), and should not be persecuted.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

dvdeug — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 10:17:45 +0000

I didn't respond to pizza because I didn't have anything to say to them; there are distinct costs of other options. But you are getting hostile and unfair.

I dot my i's and cross my t's on licenses, and it boils my blood sometimes to see other people who don't. I can't tell you how many time people have failed to followed a simple CC-BY license correctly. The GPL-2 requires, by my understanding, that if you ship the Linux kernel, you have to ship your particular configuration code to build your specific kernel, not just generic kernel source. Every time you ship a binary patch, you have to update your source code availability to include the version of the kernel you used for that patch and the configuration code you used. The GPL-2 gives no exception to shipping all source code or providing a written offer, except for non-commercial distribution; in theory, even if you're basing it on a particular version of Debian or Red Hat, you still need to provide source in lieu of pointing to their source repositories. (That is likely to be a difference between doing it right and doing it good enough.)

In any case, the GPL 2 is going to require, for every binary patch, that you have a system for making sure you're posting correct source along with it. That's an real cost.

I also see a difference here between FSF copyright assignments and Linux's lack thereof. For all the FSF copyright assignments are a pain, as a company, I would know who they are, and I would know how they work, and if there's some license requirement we were having problems with, I'd expect a polite note from them to start. If we were honest about trying to comply, I wouldn't be worried the FSF was going to sue us. With Linux, you can get sued in random jurisdictions by copyright holders with distinct interpretations of the license and distinct tolerances for (possibly debatable) deviations from that.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

mjg59 — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 08:51:29 +0000

There's a pretty clear cost of dealing with the GPL. You need to either host downloads, ship source with your binaries, or have a process for dealing with requests. And to do that, you need to have a development and build process that allows you to identify which source needs to be shipped and package it appropriately.

There's a real cost here. I'll happily agree that it's outweighed by the benefits that using Linux brings vendors, and that in the long run having infrastructure that does the right thing is probably going to be better in a bunch of other ways as well. But using BSD would avoid all of that, and so copyleft software needs to continue to demonstrate that its benefits outweigh those costs.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

jamesh — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 08:41:46 +0000

The complaint involves some interesting language. It asserts that Vizio is relying on the GPL to distribute the software on the TV without providing any evidence of this. So Vizio could potentially shut down the lawsuit very quickly by asserting that they aren't relying on the GPL, and the customer has no standing to request source code or any of the other remedies they seek.

However, if they do that then it makes a developer-side law suit far easier. Rather than having to convince the court that the manufacturer's behaviour doesn't conform to the terms of the license, they can go straight to the fact that the manufacturer had no other license.

This is particularly relevant for the case at hand, since the Conservancy represents the developers of some of the software at hand. So shutting down the first law suit would directly provide evidence for a second.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

oldtomas — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 08:29:47 +0000

"...the cost of dealing with the GPL"

Nice obscure insinuation you have there.

Which "cost", pray, are you alluding to? Here, I must agree with pizza: the costs are derisory.

I call out the customary anti-copyleft FUD on that one, sir.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

idrys — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 07:22:17 +0000

> The issue isn't that they're not translating their page to all possible licences, which I agree they are not required to do, but that when many people follow the link to the sources they are simply told the sources don't exist on the site. The site's decision about whether the user gets the working page is based on a browser setting that the user is never informed about; only experimentation by LWN readers has turned the real link up.

It's even worse: It drops me to the de-de page simply because I'm in Germany, even though I set en-us as my preferred content language; this persists even if I remove de-de from my list of preferred content languages. So it seems the redirection is location-based, unless you know to explicitly put en-us there; i.e. if I'm not in the US, I need to know about the en-us link, or I might think they don't provide the source code at all.

I believe this is rather incompetence than malice, though. One out of a long list of websites that insist to use the main language of the place you access it from, rather than one of your preferred languages.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

madhatter — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 06:48:17 +0000

The issue isn't that they're not translating their page to all possible licences, which I agree they are not required to do, but that when many people follow the link to the sources they are simply told the sources don't exist on the site. The site's decision about whether the user gets the working page is based on a browser setting that the user is never informed about; only experimentation by LWN readers has turned the real link up.

I'd be quite surprised if that were held to constitute "equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place". It would be better if they linked to the actual place where the sources are, instead of forcing everyone through an undocumented LANG-based adventure.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

NYKevin — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 06:32:40 +0000

To my mind, that S-1 language reads like a very boilerplate "we use FOSS" disclosure. It is worded as a hypothetical ("any failure to comply [...] could negatively affect our business") rather than a more concrete statement such as "we're in violation, we know we're in violation, and we're blindly hoping that nobody sues us for it." Companies put all sorts of hypotheticals in their SEC disclosures all the time. The whole point of such disclosures is to provide tons of speculative "here's how our business might fail" language, so that investors can make their own assessments about the plausibility and risk of each hypothetical.

Pick any big American company you like, and put "[company name] 10-k" into your favorite search engine. Then click on the top result and scroll to the "risk factors" section. You'll see lots of conditional statements like "our business depends on [X], and if [something goes wrong with X] then [we will have a problem]." Statements of this form do *not* imply that anyone thinks X is actually a problem, just that it hypothetically could become a problem.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

nickodell — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 05:06:08 +0000

> Rule 10b5-1 isn't a get out of jail free card that exempts one from insider trading, sorry (cf. Nacchio Qwest case).

I don't think the Nacchio Qwest case is comparable. Joseph Nacchio was a CEO who lied about whether his company was going to land an important contract. He was in possession of material information (specifically, that he was lying) and traded on that information.

Here, the most you could argue is that the legal risk from misuse of open source software wasn't clearly disclosed in their S-1, or that the threat is more immediate than the disclosure implies. Given that the SFC lawsuit seeks no damages, and that Vizio's competitors are clearly capable of operating while disclosing modifications to open-source libraries, it seems hard to argue that the company is in much danger.

I agree in general that rule 10b5-1 does not protect an executive against charges that they traded on the basis of material nonpublic information if they learned that information prior to creating the trade plan.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

NYKevin — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 04:43:04 +0000

> Rule 10b5-1 isn't a get out of jail free card that exempts one from insider trading, sorry (cf. Nacchio Qwest case).

Sorry, you're right, I should have clarified that I was speaking in more general terms (i.e. "this *usually* does not constitute insider trading, because...").

Mali + GPL

bnorris — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 04:12:01 +0000

That may be, but that doesn't affect the topic in question, which is whether Roku (or Vizio) is satisfying their GPL obligations and documenting licenses appropriately. No one is actually shipping Panfrost in products, at least not yet.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

jebba — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 03:44:21 +0000

> Rule 10b5-1
> "The SEC has decided that this does not constitute insider trading, because I did not have control over the timing of this sale."

Rule 10b5-1 isn't a get out of jail free card that exempts one from insider trading, sorry (cf. Nacchio Qwest case).

Vizio was aware of the potential issue back when they did initial filings at the beginning of the year. See their initial SEC Form S-1 Registration Statement filed March 1, 2021[1]. Such as page 55:

> "Some of our consumer devices contain “open source” software, and any failure to comply with the terms of one or more of these open source licenses could negatively affect our business."

So they knew it is an issue in general, but they didn't disclose that they have known issues that had already been raised by the SFC.

[1] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001835591/cecc...

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

NYKevin — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 02:53:11 +0000

The SEC filing contains the following rather interesting text:

> The option exercises and sales reported in this Form 4 were effected pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 trading plans adopted by the Reporting Person on May 28, 2021.

Translated into English:

> On May 28, 2021, I wrote down a detailed plan of how and when my stocks would be sold, and gave it to my broker. These sales were made automatically by following that plan. The SEC has decided that this does not constitute insider trading, because I did not have control over the timing of this sale.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

NYKevin — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 02:44:58 +0000

Strictly speaking, the GPL just says you have to provide the source code. There's no "and also you must provide a nicely-localized web page in every language which you otherwise support" provision (indeed, you're technically not even required to provide source over HTTP(S) at all, as long as source can be reasonably obtained). Assuming that their documentation (or manual, or whatever they put in the box with the stick) actually points to a URL that works, even if it's not the URL that search engines find,* English-only is not a GPL violation.

Would it be better if they included non-English translations? Of course! But they're not legally required to do so, and (good-quality) translation isn't exactly free.

* Another commenter has indicated that you can stick en-us into the middle of the URL to make it work for everyone. Being a USAian myself, I am not in a position to test this assertion.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

WolfWings — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 01:49:07 +0000

That was less to avoid Linux and more they were reducing the cost of the router by cutting the RAM/Flash sizes significantly, and those smaller sizes were too small to squeeze Linux with the interface codebase they were running at the time. They released the "GL" line at the same literal time with the original larger RAM/Flash sizes, but a higher price point.

Mali + GPL

pabs — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:57:40 +0000

Now that the reverse engineered support for Mali is in mainline mesa, ARM's proprietary drivers are mostly irrelevant.

SFC files suit against Vizio over GPL violations

scientes — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:48:37 +0000

> That sounds like skating rather close to insider trading.

If you multiple the stock price of Twitter by the number of stocks in circulation you end up with numbers that are bigger than countries, so talk of "insider trading" is just royal-blue-blood courtship gossip.

Mali + GPL

scientes — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:44:53 +0000

But those pieces of code are completely dependent on and derivative of code from the same company for which the preferred form of modification is not available.