Individuals who want to obtain the source code for the embedded device that they have bought are not able to sue because they are not the primary copyright holder.
But they can resort to other means to get the code. Brendan Scott (pic below) , a Sydney-based lawyer, yesterday told an audience at the 12th Australian national Linux conference how to deal with the problem, in a talk titled "Issues of infringing open source software".
"If you sell an item that violates FOSS licences then you are violating the Trade Practices Act," Scoot said; the Act has, of January 1, been renamed as the Competition and Consumer Act.
Scott last year completed a research paper, funded by a grant from Linux Australia, on the same subject as his talk. The paper is available on his website; his talk was, in large part, derived from this research.
He outlined a sample scenario; a person might buy an embedded device, realise that it was running FOSS software and then go back to the seller and ask for the source code, build scripts etc only to be told that the vendor did not have them.
The vendor had no obligation to the buyer, because the buyer was not the copyright holder for the code that had been used, according to this imaginary scenario.
Under contract law, if A and B have a contract then C cannot sue either of them for violation of the terms of the contract. Similarly, under tort law, if A assaults B, C cannot sue - unless C was injured in the assault, Scott said.
But under Australian Consumer Law (as it is now known), misleading or deceptive conduct in trade and commerce could attract damages. The same went for false or misleading conduct or behaviour that was likely to mislead in the matter of trade and commerce.
The latter would attract greater penalties, he said. The ACL was designed to protect consumers and prevent harm before it happened.