This doesn't make sense. If Vizo never licensed the software to you under the GPL, you can't say they violated the GPL. The court should not be able to make up contracts that don't exist between parties.
This article is not about whether Smartcast TV has all the neccessary licenses to be distributed. It's not the copyright owner of a dependency suing them.
If Vizio used GPL licensed software and did not follow its license rules, then they’re the ones breaking the license terms and GPL licensing of the product was always implied.
Not following the license terms have a name, stealing.
They are clearly committing copyright infringement, but plenty of a copyright infringement happens in practice and it is tolerated by the copyright owners. This is not what I am objecting to though. I am objecting to the idea that Vizio has a contract with a user to give them the source code of their proprietary software. If Vizio ignore a license, in my mind there is no way for that license to establish a contract between Vizio and a user. How can there be a meeting of minds when Vizio's mind disagrees with the contract.
Isn’t it more that they have a contract with the developers of the GPL:ed code? But sure they can decide to break that contract and take the consequences of committing copyright infringement.
I understand, it’s not a direct contract, but they’re infringing on copyrighted material to create their software and not following what they agreed.
Expecting to benefit from copyright in their own product while ignoring the license of all the products they used, that’s what bothers me, it’s hypocrisy. It’s open sourced software, free like speech, not like beer.
If they don't do that, they are in violation of copyright (since nothing else gives them permission to copy and distribute it).
Not following the license terms have a name, stealing.
Expecting to benefit from copyright in their own product while ignoring the license of all the products they used, that’s what bothers me, it’s hypocrisy. It’s open sourced software, free like speech, not like beer.
PS: I didn’t vote on any comment.
Sure.
>not following what they agreed.
They may have never agreed.
>that’s what bothers me
You can feel that way, but it's up to the copyright owner to decide if they want to go after such an infringement or if they are okay with it.
But, more to the point, that’s not the basis for the tentative ruling under discussion, so its irrelevant to whether the decision makes sense.