Yes! The filings have definitely been interesting. And there have been a lot of them and they lay out the arguments pretty well. The page the original post links to has all the gritty details if you really want to read it all (as I did.)

I think this trial is kindof the “final stretch” before an official ruling would be issued. And of course, there’s potential for appeals.

(And, as I’ve just now discovered, this trial did get delayed again. :( )

Just to give the backstory, though, the legal theory at work here is pretty interesting. The SFC has been involved in other suits around the GPL. Those other suits have been brought on the theory that the GPL is a copyright license and so the case to be brought is a copyright infringement suit. But the thing about a copyright infringement suit is that the only ones who have standing to bring such a suit are the copyright holders. This has certainly worked out for other cases in the past like Christoph Hellwig’s lawsuit against VMware in Germany (which the SFC partially funded and helped out Christoph Hellwig with things.) That suit is basically why we have OpenWRT today.

But this suit is different. The SFC bought a Vizio smart TV, analyzed it, and found that it contains a bunch of GPL’d code in binary form only. (The Linux kernel, FFMPEG, a bunch of libraries and such. You get the idea.) The SFC contacted Vizio and demanded the source code of all that GPL’d code and Vizio gave back… something, but not what the GPL requires. The SFC isn’t the copyright holders on any of that software. The GPL, I think it’s fair to argue (and the court seems to agree so far), intends that the SFC be able to get the source code of all GPL’d software on the TV in question, but if the SFC brings a copyright suit, they’ll almost certainly be found not to have standing to bring the suit since they’re not the copyright holders and the suit will be thrown out of court.

So, instead, the SFC is arguing that the GPL is not just a copyright license. In an unprecedented move, they’re arguing that the GPL contains both copyright and contract terms. There is precedent for this with other licenses. Probably most notably MDY Industries v. Blizzard Entertainment Inc. (2010). Both parties in the Vizio suit have been quoting extensively from the MDY decision claiming it supports their side. Lol. Mostly because it’s kindof the major precedent on the topic of the intersection of copyright and contract law. The MDY case picked apart which parts of a license document were under copyright and which portions were under contract. “Conditions vs covenants” as the MDY case called the different elements.

One thing about contract law. If a contract between two individuals would also benefit a third individual who is not a party to the contract, that third individual is considered a “third-party beneficiary” to the contract, and has standing to bring a breach-of-contract suit. (Like, if you and I had a contract that said “I’ll sell you one ton of tinned sardines and in return you have to pay me $10,000 and pay Steve over there an additional $10,000”, then Steve would be a third-party beneficiary with standing to bring a suit against you if you received my sardines and paid me $10,000 but didn’t pay Steve.) (One other thing I’ll say is that I’m not sure whether the third-party beneficiary having standing to bring a breach-of-contract suit is a U.S. federal law thing or specific to California law.)

So the legal theory under which the SFC is bringing the suit goes like this:

• The GPL is not only a copyright license, but also contains contractual terms. If a party breaks the contractual terms, those should constitute grounds for a breach-of-contract finding.
• SFC bought a TV from Vizio which contained various GPL’d and LGPL’d code in object form.
• Vizio has a valid contract with the copyright holders of all of the GPL’d code on the TV in question.
• The “source code provision” in the GPL (from the text of the GPL, “You may convey a covered work in object code form… provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License.” Reading further, one way in which you’re allowed to convey the source code is to include only a “written offer” for the source code. So I think a lot of the filings in this Vizio case will refer to the “source code or written offer” and the claim that neither has been provided satisfactorily by Vizio.) is a contractual provision.
• Vizio provided no source code nor written offer with the TV, nor have following dialog between the SFC and Vizio produced the full source code.
• And the SFC qualifies as an intended “third-party beneficiary” of the contract between the copyright holders and Vizio, and thus has standing to bring a breach-of-contract suit against Vizio.
• So SFC is asking the court to compel Vizio to uphold their contractual obligations under the GPL – most importantly the source code provision.

That’s what the suit is about in short, and the SFC brought the breach-of-contract suit against Vizio in California courts. (For matters of federal law, suits have to be brought in federal court, but this contract claim is a matter of state law, and thus it’s up to the complaintant (SFC) to decide whether it’ll be brought in state or federal court.)

Vizio first tried to claim that the SFC’s claim shouldn’t validly have been a contract case at all and in fact is most properly a copyright case. Again, issues of federal law must be brought in federal court, so Vizio under a “preemption” argument got the courts to “remove” the case (from state court) to federal court. Federal court, upon hearing SFC’s arguments (“it’s not a copyright claim, it’s a contract claim, and therefore SFC gets to decide whether this is brought in California court or federal court, and we chose California court, so send the case back to California court, please”) immediately sent it back to California court.

Vizio has been oddly insistent about the preemption thing and has continued to try to convince the California courts to throw the case out because what SFC is really arguing (at least by Vizio’s estimation) is a copyright claim. And they’ve been slapped down a couple of times.

(I’m definitely forgetting and leaving out some things. SFC hasn’t only asked for one thing, but multiple things in their filing. But yeah.)

In the most exciting development so far, the court issued a “tentative ruling.” Basically “here’s a ‘draft’ sort of ruling that if neither of the parties objects will become the official ruling”. And that “tentative ruling” mostly agreed with SFC. So it really seems like the court is leaning pretty heavily in the direction of the SFC’s arguments.

Of course, Vizio objected and demanded a proper trial. And Vizio has been stalling as much as they can to try to starve SFC of funds and will to continue. But unless SFC pulls out, it really seems like Vizio has a very uphill battle if they have to try to change the court’s mind on the matter.

And if the court finds in SFC’s favor and Vizio produces the source code, the SFC is going to release it to everybody in a way that enables the creation of a completely FOSS OS distribution for Vizio TVs. And just as is the case with OpenWRT, I think if Vizio TVs get such a FOSS distributoin, other brands of TV won’t be terribly far behind.

But also, if this sets a precedent, any request that any old regular person makes of a consumer electronics manufacturer for the source code of any GPL’d code on consumer electronics devices will have a lot more “teeth”. This could affect smart phones, smart speakers, robot vacuum cleaners, cars, smart toasters, you name it.

So, yeah. Super exciting in general. Except maybe a little less so now that it’s been delayed again. But still exciting!