{% block subtitle %}Press - {% endblock %}

{% block submenuselection %}Press{% endblock %}

{% block content %}

<h3 id="">Q: Who is the defendant in this lawsuit?</h3>

<p>The defendant is Vizio, Inc., a U.S.-based TV maker and media company that has been publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange since March 2021.</p>

<h3 id="">Q: What did Vizio do wrong?</h3>

<p>The lawsuit alleges that Vizio’s TV products, built on its SmartCast system, contain software that Vizio unfairly appropriated from a community of developers who intended consumers to have very specific rights to modify, improve, share, and reinstall modified versions of the software.</p>

<h3 id="">Q: So, Vizio didn’t create SmartCast?</h3>

<p>It appears from extensive research that the core components of SmartCast were not created by Vizio, but rather, are based on various components licensed to the public under free and open-source software (FOSS) licenses. Most notably, many of the programs that are part of the SmartCast system are licensed under the GPL.</p>

<h3 id="">Q: Why must you file a lawsuit? Isn’t there any other way to convince Vizio to comply with the GPL? </h3>

<p>Vizio has a long history of violating copyleft. The company has also stopped replying to inquiries from Software Freedom Conservancy. Vizio has been benefiting from the use of an abundance of existing copylefted software, but completely ignores the responsibilities that come with using the licenses. Furthermore, Vizio has already been subject to a large class-action suit that alleged that Vizio was misusing its customers’ private information (Vizio settled that class action for $17 million).</p>

<h3 id="">Q: What GPL code has been discovered in Vizio’s SmartCast? </h3>

<p>SmartCast is a Linux-based operating system. That means that not only do multiple copies of the Linux kernel appear in the firmware, other GPL'd and LGPL'd programs were found, including U-Boot, bash, gawk, tar, glibc, and ffmpeg.</p>

<h3 id="">Q: How can I verify Software Freedom Conservancy’s technical findings above? </h3>

<p>Object code can be found on the TVs and source code/binaries on the filesystem. There are multiple models in which we can confirm the findings. Go to sfconservancy.org/vizio for details.</p>

{% endblock %}