California judge may force Vizio to release SmartCast TV source code to buyers after Software Freedom Conservancy claims GPL license violations since 2018; tentative ruling signals partial win for open-source enforcement.

Judge hints Vizio TV buyers may have rights to source code licensed under GPL

Electronics biz Vizio may be required by a California court to provide source code for its SmartCast TV software, which is allegedly based on open source code licensed under the GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1. The legal complaint from the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) seeks access to the SmartCast source code so that Vizio customers can make changes and improvements to the platform, something that ought to be possible for code distributed under the GPL. On Thursday, California Superior Court Judge Sand...