Villa: Will the new judicial ruling in the Vizio lawsuit strengthen the GPL?

Luis Villa writesabout the recent ruling in the Software Freedom Conservancy'sGPL-violation lawsuit against Vizio, wherein the judge refused to agreethat the SFC lacks standing to sue.

In some sense, not much has changed: if you were obligated tocomply with the GPL two weeks ago, you have the same obligationstoday. If you didn't have obligations then, you don't have themnow.

What has changed is who can enforce those obligations. Two weeksago, we mostly believed that enforcement could only come from theauthors of the code. Those folks rarely had time, money, orinterest for litigation, and they might also face a lot of pressurefrom their peers and employers to avoid litigation.

If this ruling holds up at the end of the case, the number ofpotential enforcers just went way up.