The article says the SFC had a fundraiser and raised over $250,000 to hire a lawyer.
There's a confusing part of the article where he says that what he believes is a violation is something that a judge isn't going to care about. I don't know if he's implying that the judges aren't capable of interpreting the AGPL properly, or if he's admitting that the legal argument isn't as solid as they thought it was when they started. It's a confusing thing to say next to the broad claims about violations.
I think he's saying the opposite: that "clever" attempts to work around the license aren't things a judge is going to appreciate.
That would make more sense. Thank you.
For background, I participated in a "small" action that Sun took against someone who was violating the Java license. The legal fees (in the late 90's) were 8.2 million dollars. $250K is nothing to sneeze at, its a solid 6 weeks of a single lawyer's time, maybe a couple of weeks for a small team. Against a company doing nearly a billion dollars a year in revenue[1] and owning 29% of the printer market? Add in a couple of expert witnesses which are essential to that sort of a case and you'll see that $250K isn't even table stakes. Sad, I know, but it is the way things are these days.
And the saddest thing is that Bambu knows this. They know that people who give away software are not a serious threat to them. And it is especially galling that the value they have extracted out of that software will pay the lawyers that keep you from preventing them from continuing to extract that value and keep it for themselves.
[1] "Media reports have also indicated that Bambu Lab has shipped more than 1.2 million units, claiming a 29% global share." -- https://kr-asia.com/bambu-lab-nears-usd-100-billion-valuatio...
Lawyers earn 250k per 6 weeks? More than 2M per year?
Lawyers fees for a case like that also include expenses, and this would be on the high side.
Court fees, fees for accessing case law, experts, paralegals, etc.
You pay the lawyer and a big portion of that goes towards his costs for additional labour and everything else. A lawyer grossing $2m/year isn't bringing home anything close to that.
That said $250k for a single lawyer for 6 weeks seems high.
Yes. Well they certainly bill at that rate, it goes some to the lawyer, some to rent, etc.
Outrageous cartel then. For such amounts there would be plenty who would have intellectual chops to do the job, driving the price down. Legal costs are nowhere close to this outside the US.
Nothing stops anyone from briging a suit and representing themselves.
IP litigation is absolutely that expensive, outside the US and inside. Didn’t you just come into this conversation unaware of what IP litigators earn?
Can you imagine how litigious we'd be if legal services were cheaper?
This just means that there's pent up demand for litigation that is currently left unfulfilled because it's too expensive. Or, equivalently, many people think that they have been wronged and must simply take it, due to litigation being the only option to enforce that issue while litigation is too expensive to be affordable to them, or more expensive than the cost of the dispute (so, in effect, scamming people out of small dollar amounts is legal since the cost of enforcing one's legal rights may be in excess of the cost of the dispute).
Imagine what would happen if we made it cheaper, as happens very frequently when some other good or service becomes cheaper? Usually the provision/manufacture has some advancements that make it much more scalable, and often less involved, resulting in a lower cost, and sometimes but not always lower quality. So, for litigation? We'd get lower cost, via some more efficient¹ system², maybe lower quality depending on how we make that system more efficient and this may or may not matter in any particular case, and then those people who think that they've been wronged suddenly have an avenue to address it. Overall, this seems like a strong positive to me.
Now, what if people start enforcing frivolous legal rights? Repeal or reform the law that creates the right if it' s so bad. What about people dragging others into court in bad faith? Well, we just streamlined the bureaucracy and took a buzz-saw to the costs, so is it hard to defend against? Perhaps not. Making that perhaps a certain reality would be a good goal of such reform methods. We already allow people with more money and systemic literacy to bully people in this way, and this is a large part of litigiousness in our society now, so this strategy becoming ineffective may reduce it substantially and thus ironically make litigiousness less intense in at least some cases.
1: one proposal off the top of my head (so it may be terrible): sending written documents to a judge with LLMs helping lay people write and refine them, or a cheaper-than-a-litigation-lawyer expert human review service, perhaps, then the judge rules on their own schedule asynchronously for civil disputes without any heavy procedure to deal with.
2: another proposal is to remove law school/JD requirements to obtain a law license, but keeping a rigorous test in place and maybe some less-intense character/background checks, to lower the pay of lawyers
> 2: another proposal is to remove law school/JD requirements to obtain a law license, but keeping a rigorous test in place […]
This does exist, but has become less common over time instead of more common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_law
Have a look at this: https://ukcalculator.com/barrister-fees-calculator.html
It is for the UK but no doubt m'learned friends in the US can command even higher fees.
Try grabbing a KC for five days, civil/commercial with all the trimmings. That will set you back £105,000.
Obviously the impoverished KC won't pocket all that lolly. There is VAT to pay and staff costs and stuff.
A KC is one of these: https://kcappointments.org/ for obvious reasons they used to known as QCs
Yes. About 5-10% at a big firm earn that.
I've only had to hire a lawyer once, and it was $2,500 to have them file a couple papers and speak to the judge once.
You're paying for their experience, just like an engineer - only it's often much higher stakes than a piece of software or product: your livelihood or freedom.
The reason engineers don't cost this much is that lawyers are lawyer brained smooth talking networking types who hold together tightly and have a quid pro quo system and you have to pay protection money to their mafia. Law is based on rubbing elbows in the right places, playing tennis and golf with the right people and in case of jury trials, on acting convincingly and exuding a certain image to manipulate their emotions. Engineers are too autistic to hold together end rent seek this much.
But some engineers do make that much. I say this as a fellow software engineer: why do so many of my colleagues think every other profession is worthless bullshit? BTW, statistically, SEs and Lawyers earn about the same...
That confused me as well. I interpreted as judges not having (much) precedent and potentially unable/unwilling to interpret along lines of the license intent. But that’s what courts in this process are there for IMO. If a well written license and a good case, then you need to start somewhere to set precedent.
He is saying a judge will not care that they are technically a separate download. They only care if the end result is complying with the spirit of the license.
GPL licenses are so much interpreted along lines of license intent that a German judge ruled GPLv2 software couldn't be Tivoized.
Can you share a link?
This would be a vindication of the SFC's position, which holds that what people commonly call "TiVoization" was in fact already not allowed by the GPLv2, and that the GPLv3 makes a slightly more complicated requirement.
Specifically, the SFC generally claims that the GPLv2 doesn't allow you to distribute hardware running GPLv2 software on it and then refuse to allow customers to modify or update this software themselves*.
Instead, they claim that what TiVo actually did that necessitated the creation of the GPLv3 is more complicated: you were perfectly well allowed to modify the Linux system on your TiVo box, BUT the proprietary TiVo software would thereafter refuse to run. Basically, you could either use the TiVo with only official TiVo software, OR you could use it as your own Linux PC, but NOT both.
According to the SFC, this is the only difference between GPLv2 and GPLv3 in this area - if the functionality of the product you received is allowed to be degraded intentionally because of modifications you make under your GPL rights. Linux with its GPLv2 license allows this, but much of the GNU utils, with the GPLv3 license, don't at this time.
* unless the hardware itself is incapable of loading modified software, of course, such as the case where the software is burned into a ROM and no one can update it.
I would expect this to forcibly unlock the bootloaders of every Android phone sold in Germany (because the Linux kernel, used on all such phones, is GPLv2, and to replace it the bootloader must be unlocked, and tivoization means restriction of the right to replace it), yet as far as I know this is not the case.
So, what am I missing? Which specific German cases are you thinking about?
I would imagine any settlement dollars would be enough of a carrot to get a lawyer involved. Has anyone actually sued over this yet?
It's really difficult to collect any judgement in China.
https://www.internationaldisputeresolutionlaw.com/2025/06/en...
I can't find the source right now, but I believe punitive damages are excluded. So all you could collect would be actual damages. What are the actual damages Bambu owners have suffered?
I guess I need to buy another printer to fund the other side?