I get mad triggered by software license violation discussions.
Please for the love of all that the FSF thinks is holy - just file a damn lawsuit if you are telling me they are violating the law. State your claim and have a court sort it out.
It costs hundreds of dollars. For a medical device? Seems like a good deal.
The OP almost certainly isn’t a copyright holder for the Linux kernel. They probably would have said if they were.
The theory is being tested that you don't need to be a copyright holder to file a lawsuit https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
Then why are they trying to enforce copyright/contract law without standing?
Making a blog post about someone elses copyright being violated is even more annoying to me.
Huh, they’re not. You’re the one saying they should.
What's their basis for sending the emails then? If not one of legal standing in copyright/contract law?
Edit: My point is this is just another one of many annoying people you have to deal with who will email you alleging all sorts of legal violations, who don't themselves understand anything about the claims they are making.
Basis? You mean reason?
They want the Linux kernel source code.
No, he means basis, not reason. There's a difference and I'm genuinely curious in your answer.
Sure, I understand that there's a difference. That's why I sought clarification.
My understanding of the concept of "basis" does not fit the context of sending an email, and "reason" is the closest I can find that fits.
Basis being concerned with rules or authority. The assumption being when asking "what is the basis for X?" that there was a bar that needed to be met beyond the doers motivations. That there needed to be more than they wanted to. Which of course, does not apply to sending an email. I could email you right now asking you what your favourite type of fish is or seeing if you want to play a game of chess, no basis needed. I'd just need a reason to.
That’s a very intricate and convoluted way of saying they have no basis for making a demand.
But sounds like we agree, they have no real basis for making a demand.
Poorly explained maybe but it covers not just that there is no basis but that no basis is needed and draws attention to the odd request for a basis where none is needed.
Just "there is no basis" as a response would be like saying "yes" or "no" to "have you stopped beating your wife?"
Aren’t we talking about enforcing/exercising a legal right?
Whether you have a reason to make a claim is much different than whether you have a legal basis for your claim.
We're talking about Lost-Entrepreneur439 on Reddit emailing a company to ask for some of their code.
You can just do that. No GPL, open source, enforcement, demands, etc language needed. Just "I'm trying to do X, can I see the code for Y?". I receive and send them at work pretty frequently.
They've mentioned the GPL as a way to try to increase the chances of getting sent the code. A support person for a medical device company might not know anything about software licences or linux or GPL. If the company has some sort of "send GPL code to askers" policy and Lost-Entrepreneur439 just asks for the linux kernel, the support person might not know that the GPL policy applies and just say no. If you include it in your message then it increases the chances of them typing "GPL" in to whatever internal knowledge bank they have and seeing "for GPL requests, forward the enquiry to jeff@ourcompany.com" or something like that.
The GPL isn't between Lost-Entrepreneur439 and the company so I don't think "enforcement/exercising a legal right" is an accurate way to describe what we're talking about. That would be if the copyright holders to the linux kernel get involved.
EDIT: Although that seems like largely just a semantics thing. Like if a judge orders a company to pay you some money and you say "give it to austhrow743" is it valid to say that I have a right to that money? Or is it that you have the right that I get that money? If someone wants to phrase "linux kernel copyright holders have a right to demand users of their code share it with anyone who asks" as "anyone who asks has a right to that code" then I don't really have a problem with that.
I just see a big difference between making a request and making a claim. I don't need to think I'm legally entitled to something to ask for it. I don't even need to think that getting it is likely. Whereas Abigail appears to be treating sending and receiving requests by emails as equivalent to a court summons.
And now we get to my question of why. They want the Linux source code, the company is not giving it to them, why is the next step a blog post instead of a lawsuit? Again this is a medical device - it's important enough to spend the money on.
They make a blog post about GPL violations which allege the company is violating the law.
I'm absolutely begging for anyone in a similar situation to prove it. The reasons those emails were sent is because they think they have a legal entitlement to be sent the source code. *PROVE IT*. It's cheap!
In what planet does a lawsuit cost hundreds of dollars?
$405
https://www.caed.uscourts.gov/caednew/index.cfm/attorney-inf...
I’ve personally never seen a lawsuit cost less than a few grand in legal fees even for small time bully defense.
This will probably dox me but I'm going to win a federal discrimination case against a university, with nothing but GPT5.x and Claude, and some filing fees. I'm no dummy but I'm not a genius. I barely got through the Advent of Code 2025 problems with a mess of spaghetti.
In my country people have a common law right to enforce the law themselves without having to pay legal fees. In America it's a statutory right I believe.
The risks of getting a costs order against me are higher than 0% but if I lose narrowly I won't be paying anything.
This is a fantasy. OK, well, if the intent is to waste time and lose a lawsuit, sure, a few hundred dollars will give you that experience. In the real world, no way. A single deposition can cost many times that figure.
You can choose to disagree, of course. My guess is that you have never done this and you have never been involved in a nontrivial legal dispute outside, perhaps, small claims court. You probably don't even own a nontrivial business. Not one person running a business would ever suggest a lawsuit could cost a few hundred dollars.
Like I said, in the real world things are different. I know people who have burned through over $50K in seemingly simple cases (one of them self-represented) only to bow out once they realized they only scratched the surface. In one case they went broke, had to sell their home to pay for the losses and move to a lower cost state just to survive. Tragic. And, BTW, they didn't lose the case. They just got to a point, tens of thousands of dollars later, where they simply had to drop it or face ending-up in a far worse situation.
When I was much younger (and really stupid as most young know-it-alls are) I decided to go after a company that owed me $100K in contractually agreed-upon consulting fees. They had already paid me over a million dollars over a couple of years, so this was not about a little $100K contract.
There was a change in management and they simply decided not to pay vendors. They did this as the simplest method (aside from laying people off) to improve financials. The new CEO and his wife also happened to own a law practice.
So, I hired an attorney (no way to do this on your own for $400). $11K later I finally understood that the balance of power was not in my favor. I may have won. It may have cost me somewhere around $75K to do so.
However, then the other reality would kick in: Collecting. Yup. Collecting was probably going to cost money and maybe even another lawsuit. Not to mention the time, measured in years, for the full experience. Not to mention the real potential of them filing for bankruptcy to gift me the experience of using my judgement as rough toilet paper.
In fact, that is precisely what they did about 18 months later to other vendors, who, like me, where chasing payment. They took a year to transfer all assets to a new corporation. When the original corporation had no assets whatsoever, the went ahead and filed BK and told everyone to go shove their judgements (if any).
I was actually glad that I only burned $12K to learn an important lesson: The legal path is only viable when you are talking about going up against an equal. Like anything, there are exceptions to this, however, in general, this is the way the real world works.
Still don't believe me? If you happen to be a budding entrepreneur looking for investors, do this: During your meeting, tell them that you are not concerned about lawsuits because they can be sorted with $405. Don't blink or you'll miss to witness just how quickly they leave the room. Really.
This one. That's what the filing fees are for a lawsuit like this. There's no rule saying you have to pay a lawyer to write a statement of claim.
Edit:
Courts deal with contract law disputes all the time. It's their bread and butter, everyday, nothing special stuff.
Edit2:
To you below, citation needed
Is that also what it costs when you lose and the court makes you pay their lawyer time?
Use the CCB then?
Edit: I'm somewhat mad that there's all these tools out there to solve the screeching about GPL violations and nobody seems to want to use them.
For reference for non Americans/non legal people:
> The Copyright Claims Board (CCB) is available to resolve copyright disputes of a relatively low economic value and provides an efficient, less expensive alternative to federal court.
https://ccb.gov/
Thank you, I should have provided that myself and been more courteous in my response.
>nobody seems to want to use them.
Basically everybody who knows enough to try, knows what the outcomes will tend to be.