Yearslong fight over users' right to tweak smart TV software heads to trial - Ars Technica
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For years, owners of Vizio smart TVs have had little control over the software running on their sets—software that can track viewing habits, push ads, and generally shape the experience of using the device.
The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a US nonprofit that promotes and provides legal support for free and open source software projects, isn’t happy about that—so much so that it has spent eight years trying to force the release of the complete source code for Vizio’s Linux-based smart TV operating system.
Now, after numerous delays since the SFC filed suit in 2021, a California jury will decide in August whether Vizio must provide that code in executable form to SFC and any Vizio TV owner who wants it.
The outcome could reverberate across the industry. Because many of today’s popular smart TV operating systems are Linux-based, the case may help determine how much control many owners have over their sets. Access to the full code would allow users to make meaningful changes to how their TVs work, including limiting ads or deactivating automatic content recognition.
Ahead of the trial, we spoke with an SFC executive about why it’s suing Vizio and what it hopes the case will accomplish.
Vizio and its parent company, Walmart, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. We reviewed filings from Vizio to understand why it doesn’t think the GNU’s General Public License (GPL) and its “Lesser” version (LGPL) require it to share the source code for Vizio OS (formerly Smart Cast).
Software Freedom Conservancy sues Vizio
The Software Freedom Conservancy argues it has the right to Vizio OS’s source code because it owns several Vizio TVs and because the operating system is based on Ubuntu, a Linux distribution. (SFC employees bought seven Vizio TVs from 2018 to 2021 after getting complaints about Vizio not sharing its TVs’ source code, according to the complaint.) In general, the Linux kernel is provided under the terms of GPLv2, as noted by kernel.org, which is run by the Linux Kernel Organization.
SFC’s lawsuit alleges that Vizio breached GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 by failing to make available the complete source code for Vizio OS. The case is currently in the Orange County Superior Court of the State of California. The lawsuit targets Vizio specifically, but the impact could extend to other Linux-based smart TV OSes such as LG’s webOS, Samsung’s Tizen, and Roku’s Roku OS.
“We expect all companies who distribute Linux and other software using right-to-repair agreements like the GPL in their products would comply with these agreements,” Denver Gingerich, the director of compliance at SFC, told Ars.
SFC sued Vizio specifically because the group received numerous reports from concerned users about the company’s TVs, Gingerich said. Vizio has shared some of its operating system’s source code, but SFC claims that code does “not include all files and scripts that would permit the code to be compiled into an executable form,” according to its amended complaint from 2024 (PDF).
“As a nonprofit charity with limited resources, we sadly cannot solve every violation of the GPL agreement, but we do work hard to solve those that are important to a wide variety of users, and the popularity of Vizio TVs suggested to us that resolving this case would be especially worth the effort,” Gingerich said.
The terms of GPLv2 say that “[f]or an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.”
FSF says there’s “no reason” for code to be withheld
Legal filings from both Vizio and SFC frame the Freedom Software Foundation (FSF) as the authority on the GPLs in question, as it’s the license steward and publisher of GNU licenses, including GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1.
FSF’s executive director, Zoë Kooyman, was deposed in the case in May 2025. When asked about the nonprofit’s stance, she said via email that the FSF supports SFC’s efforts and believes that “users should be free to enforce their right to source code under the GNU GPL licenses through any available legal mechanism.”
Vizio OS is believed to include at least two versions of the Linux kernel that are subject to GPLv2. The first appears to be tied to the Ubuntu distribution in the OS’s user interface and streaming platform, and the second seems to be tied to “a custom version...