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Your most frequently asked questions about the Vizio lawsuit, answered in one place.
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●News
Press Releases
Press
Blog
Vizio Lawsuit in the News
Our Issues in the News
●About
Sponsors
Sustainers
Board of Directors
Staff
Evaluation Committee
Outside Counsel, et alia
Transparency
Contact
●Our Work
Copyleft Compliance
We defend and uphold the rights of software users and consumers under copyleft licenses.
Impact Litigation
We defend the legal rights of software users. Learn the details, status, and stakes of our court cases.
Give Up GitHub
We urge FOSS Developers to Give Up GitHub! Learn why.
Outreachy
We offer internships for anyone who faces underrepresentation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the tech industry.
FOSSY
Our annual community-oriented conference focused on the creation and impact of free and open source software.
●Tools
Member Projects
We provide non-profit infrastructure and services to our members creating Free/Libre and Open Source Software.
Use The Source
Our tool for evaluating the source code candidates companies must provide for GPLed software.
OpenWrt One
We designed and built the first ever wireless Internet router designed with software freedom and right to repair in mind.
●Learn
The Corresponding Source
A bi-weekly oggcast about legal, policy, and many other issues in the Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) world.
Glossary of Terms
A list of terms you might be unfamiliar with but occur frequently in our work.
FAQ About the Vizio Lawsuit
Your most frequently asked questions about the Vizio lawsuit, answered in one place.
●Donate
Thanks to so many donors, we met our largest match donation ever of $211,939.
Two generous anonymous donors have provided another $40,012ofadditional matching funds.
Give now to help us reach this stretch goal!
For only 4 more days, the
next $13,079offinancial support we receive will be matched!
$26,933 matched!
$13,079 to go!
$211,927 fully matched!
The time has come to stand up for the GPL.
Update 2019-04-02: Please
see this
announcement regarding conclusion of the VMware suit in Germany. Since the suit has
concluded, any funds you donate here will support our ongoing compliance efforts. The
remaining material below is left as it was before that announcement:
In March 2015, Conservancy announced Christoph Hellwig's
lawsuit against VMware in Germany. In July 2016,
we announced that Christoph
would appeal the lower court's ruling.
Support Conservancy's and Christoph's efforts in this area
by becoming a Conservancy
sustainerordonating via
the link on the right.
We were told to ask nicely and repeatedly, so we did.
We asked allies to help us make contact in friendly and professional
ways.
Everyone asked us to give companies as many chances as possible and as
much help as possible to comply with copyleft, so we did.
We've worked for years to help VMware comply with the GPL, but they
refuse. Negotiations broke down for the last time when they insisted on an
NDA just to discuss settlement terms!
Christoph is among the most active developers of Linux. As of Feburary
19, 2015, Christoph has contributed 279,653 lines of code to the Linux kernel,
and ranks 20th among the 1,340 developers involved in the latest 3.19 kernel
release. Christoph also
ranks 4th among those who have reviewed third-party source code, tirelessly
corrected and commented on other developers' contributions. Christoph
licenses his code to the public under the terms of the GPL for practical and
ideological reasons. VMware, a company with net revenue of over $1 billion
and over 14,000 employees, ignored Christoph's choice. They took Christoph's
code from Linux and modified it to work with their own kernel without releasing
source code of the resulting complete work. This is precisely the kind of
activity Christoph and other kernel developers seek to prevent by choosing
the GPL. The GPL was written to prevent this specific scenario!
This is a matter of principle.
Free and open source software is everywhere and in everything; yet our
software freedom is constantly eroded.
We want companies to incorporate our software into new products, but there
are a few simple rules. Copylefted free software is so prevalent because
there's no way a company can compete without using a significant amount of
free software to bring products to market in reasonable time. They get so
much benefit from our work. Allowing the whole community to review, use,
improve and work with the code seems very little to ask in return. Copyleft
also ensures competitors cannot undercut those who contribute. Without active enforcement, the GPL is
effectively no different from a non-copyleft license.
What point is there for companies to make sure that they're compliant if
there are no consequences when the GPL is violated? Many will continue to
ignore the rules without enforcement. We know that there are so many
companies that willingly comply and embrace GPL as part of their business.
Some are temporarily out of compliance and need to be brought up to speed,
but willingly comply once they realize there is an issue. Sadly, VMware sits
in the rare but infamous class of perpetually non-compliant companies. VMware
has been aware of their noncompliance for years but actively refuses to do
the right thing. Help us do right by those who take the code in the spirit
it was given and comply with copyleft, and stop those don't.
We know that copyleft isn't a favorite licensing strategy for some in our
community. Even so, this case will help bring clarity on the question of
combined and derivative works, and is essential to the future of all software
freedom. This case deserves support from copyleft and non-copyleft free
software communities alike.
Show you care
Bad actors have become complacent because they think you don't care. A
strong show of public support for Conservancy and Christoph's position will
help our legal case and demonstrate the interpretive context for it.
Please donate to our campaign to enforce the GPL. Help Conservancy
increase its number of individual donors, so we have clear evidence to show
bad actors that the GPL matters to the individuals in our community.
After you donate, go and tell the world: “Play by the rules, @VMware. I defend the #GPL with Christoph & @Conservancy. #DTRTvmware Help at https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/ ” on your blog or microblog.
Isn't the combined works and/or derivative works question a legal grey area?
We don't think so, but this case will let the court to decide that question.
Either way, it's beneficial to our entire community to find out what the
judges think. (Check out our FAQ to find out more
information.)
Help us pay for this expensive lawsuit and to generally defend software
freedom and the GPL. Help us show the world that copyleft matters. We are excited
to announce that we already reached an anonymous match for this campaign, where every dollar donated
was matched up to $50,000. However, that $100,000 is just an initial step
and there is so much GPL enforcement work to do. So, please
donate now: by becoming a Conservancy Sustainer or
via donate link on the right.
Want To Know More?
Watch the video below of Conservancy Executive Director, Karen Sandler,
delivering a keynote on this topic
at
LibrePlanet 2015: