SherpaTTS is eine empfehlenswerte Text-to-Speech-Engine. Auf meinem Fairphone mit /e/OS hat sie die Sprachausgabe erheblich verbessert.

Mit der Veröffentlichung von Version 4.44.3 schließt der Docker Desktop eine kritische Sicherheitslücke.

Das Support-Ende für Windows 10 naht, viele Nutzer denken ernsthaft über einen Wechsel nach. Was macOS, ChromeOS und Linux besser können und was nicht.

Die Document Foundation hat LibreOffice 25.8 veröffentlicht.

Der TikTok-Mutterkonzern ByteDance hat mit Seed-OSS-36B ein weiteres chinesisches LLM als Open Source veröffentlicht. Es erschien unter der Apache-2.0-Lizenz.

Mozilla führt nach mehreren Jahren in der Entwicklung mit Firefox 142 ein neues System ein, das bisherige Probleme beim sicheren

Die feine, kleine und schnelle Anwendung Geany, eignet sich als einfache Entwicklungsumgebung, Text-Editor, Markdown-Editor und für Vieles mehr.

Gestern hat die Document Foundation offiziell die neue Hauptversion 25.8 der freien Office-Suite LibreOffice für Linux, macOS und Windows veröffentlicht.

Nächstes Jahr soll Amazon ein Tablet mit Android statt eigenem Fire OS bringen. Der Wechsel des Betriebssystems soll neue Kunden locken, aber der Preis steigt.

Die Document Foundation hat LibreOffice 25.8 offiziell veröffentlicht. Die neue Version steht ab sofort für Windows, macOS und Linux zum Download bereit. Besonders die Leistung wurde spürbar verbessert. Tests zeigen, dass Writer und Calc Dokumente nun bis zu dreißig Prozent schneller öffnen. Auch das Scrollen ist flüssiger, und die Speicherverwaltung effizienter. Gerade auf leistungsschwächeren Geräten […]

Der Beitrag LibreOffice 25.8 ist da: Mehr Geschwindigkeit, bessere Office-Kompatibilität und neue Funktionen erschien zuerst auf fosstopia.

Wer einen Tesla fährt, kann Betriebsdaten mit Drittanbieter-Tools wie TeslaMate sammeln und aufbereiten. Hunderte Instanzen stehen offen im Netz.

Richard Sutton, einer der Pioniere des verstärkenden Lernens (Reinforcement Learning), warnt, die heutige KI-Forschung, die auf immer größere Sprachmodelle setze, bewege sich in eine Sackgasse.

Bei dem LTS-Release Blender 4.5 sind insbesondere das Node-Interface und alle damit verbundenen Editoren verbessert worden. (Blender, 3D-Software)

Folge 149 des CIW Podcasts. Empfehlungen für das Ende von Windows 10

Eine neue Studie  von Forschern der Arizona State University zeigt: Sprachmodelle, die zu einem schrittweisen Nachdenken entlang einer Gedankenkette (Chain-of-Thoughts, CoT) aufgefordert werden,…

Einige Tesla-Fahrer werten ihre Fahrdaten mit einem Tool namens Teslamate aus, kümmern sich dann aber nicht um die Absicherung ihrer Systeme. (Sicherheitslücke, API)

Legal Corner: Bringing SumUp to compliance: a case study of license enforcement

What happens when those who benefit from the four freedoms fail to comply with the terms of a Free Software license? Today we take a look at the experience of license enforcement by one of our FSFE volunteers against the fintech company SumUp, and examine the lessons that supporters of Free Software can take away from it.

Photo by SumUp on Unsplash

Enforcing your rights under a Free Software license

The four freedoms of Free Software are important foundations on which user freedom in a digital society is built upon. In practice, the four freedoms in a particular piece of software are recognized, legitimized, and supported by the legal system through the application of a Free Software license. However, like many other rights, the four freedoms will merely be pipe dreams if they are not enforced and complied with.

Because of the construction of Free Software licenses as permissions granted by the copyright holder of the software, the use of Free Software creates a kind of legal relationship between the copyright holder and the user. Violating the terms of a Free Software license therefore results in legal consequences, including revocation of the license to the specific violating user or demands for corrective actions, the specific performance of the software license, and lawsuits.

“Specific performance” is a legal term referring to the act of fulfilling a requirement in a legal agreement in exactly the way that it is specified in that agreement.

It is important not to conceptualize software license violations simply as individual users not complying with the license of a single software project. The widespread use of Free Software licensed components in many significant commercial software products means that violators can often be large companies and organizations. Because of this, enforcement of Free Software rights against larger violating entities in practice can feel daunting and intimidating for many individual users.

Nevertheless, ensuring that Free Software license terms are complied with is ultimately a crucial factor contributing to the adherence of the four freedoms. Enforcement is therefore an important stepping stone to achieving the transparency, autonomy, and liberty that we value so much in software freedom.

Bringing SumUp to compliance: how it started

SumUp is a financial tech company that produces payment terminals and other point-of-sale systems used primarily by business entities for financial transactions, as well as the corresponding software that is loaded into them. One of SumUp’s products is the SumUp Solo (the Solo), a contactless payment terminal with many digital and software components that facilitate its operation.

In July of 2024, German FSFE team member Nicole Faerber’s place of work acquired a Solo payment card terminal. Nicole noticed that neither the documentation for the Solo, nor the software provided, nor the SumUp website provided any Free Software disclosures. In other words, Nicole noticed that users of the Solo:

1. did not have access to any identification of Free Software components present in the retail version of the Solo device;
2. did not have access to the corresponding licensing information related to these Free Software components;
3. did not have access to any copyright notices conveying information about copyright ownership of these Free Software components;
4. were not provided any offers for the source code.

This lack of disclosure was curious, especially as Nicole was aware of the work of Aaron Christophel, a German engineer who showcases how he disassembles and tinkers with his various devices. In 2023, Christophel took apart a Solo device and demonstrated how he was able to find several security issues with the device. Of interest as well was that Christophel’s disassemble showed that the Solo was working off of an Open Root Shell and a Linux system, which would imply a certain level of necessary Free Software disclosure, as well as corresponding source code, to its users.

With this in mind, Nicole privately obtained her own Solo, and conducted her own investigation into the device. In addition to the Linux kernel, she found that the device also functioned with a lot of Free Software, including:

• U-Boot (licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later);
• BusyBox (licensed under GPL-2.0-only); and
• glibc (licensed under LGPL-2.1-or-later), etc etc.

Correspondence with SumUp

With the knowledge that the Solo was loaded with numerous Free Software components, and that the lack of any FOSS disclosures meant that the Solo device was not in compliance with its license obligations, Nicole contacted SumUp support. She requested their compliance through disclosure and provision of the “complete corresponding source code” (CCS). The initial response was that such information was protected by copyright and constituted trade secrets, and accordingly her request would not be fulfilled.

Nevertheless, Nicole persisted with following up emails explaining the principles of Free Software and its licensing, and the general obligations that SumUp is obliged to comply with by including Free Software components in their devices. Without divulging too much information about the internal state of their licensing affairs, SumUp eventually responded that they were working on licensing compliance and would get back to Nicole as soon as they could.

Despite this, almost half a year after her initial contact and request, Nicole still had not received any disclosures by December 2024, nor the CCS from SumUp. In a follow-up response to indicate that she had not forgotten their obligations and her request, Nicole specified to SumUp that if their inability to provide the CCS as well as proper FOSS disclosure persisted, this could void their rights to continue properly and legally retailing their Solo devices. In response, SumUp asked Nicole to provide the legal basis for her statements, despite such information being readily available online.

Shortly thereafter, SumUp finally provided some initial disclosure documentation to Nicole as well as what they claimed to be the CCS for the Solo device. Such disclosures were insufficient, as the disclosure document was provided directly and only to Nicole, and not on a public forum, and the source code provided appeared to be incomplete. Nicole therefore requested that SumUp do the disclosures locally on the Solo devices themselves, by adding something in the Solo user interface that displays a list of software components, as well as all required licensing and copyright information.

In June 2025, after almost a year since the initial contact made with SumUp, Nicole finally received a USB stick containing the required disclosures and the CCS. Additionally, SumUp also updated their Solo device software to now show the relevant FOSS disclosures, and also to indicate where users will be able to access the CCS.

While some additional work is required to ensure if this provided information is fully accurate and fully compliant, this is nevertheless a positive outcome that contributes to SumUp’s users being able to enjoy software freedom.

Summing Up the SumUp experience

Enforcement requests can in egregious situations take time to yield results: In general, Nicole’s experience tells us that, unfortunately, enforcement against a violator can often take a fair amount of time before there can be any substantial change from a violator that yields concrete compliance results. This is particularly because if the violator had not paid attention to licensing requirements before, it will take a lot of work for a large project to come into compliance. Additionally, internal administrative procedures can also play a part in slowing down the overall compliance process.

Expect to be told that default copyright protections apply: Another factor that contributes to these delays is the defensiveness that many violators are prone to display when confronted with their non-compliance. Copyright protections are generally more well-known to the general public, relative to Free Software licensing. Because of this, a typical knee-jerk reaction experienced when requesting disclosure or CCS would be to invoke copyrights and trade secrets as a tactic, as was the case here with SumUp.

Bear in mind which department you are speaking with: Defaulting to the argument that the CCS cannot be shared because it is “copyrighted”, “trade secrets”, or other legal jargon, happens also because, especially when dealing with larger organizations, it is quite likely that the first contact you will have is usually with a customer service representative operating from a generic contact email address. The first response to a license compliance request will therefore not usually be entirely productive, unless you have a direct contact to those who have the requisite expertise in licensing to fully understand the context of a license compliance request.

Indeed, if you would like to expedite your own enforcement process of a particular company violator, it is generally a good idea to look for the contacts of people working either in a software development or legal capacity within that company. You can try to find this information from various sources, including the “About” pages of the company website, publicly available employee personal pages, or from public repositories such as GitHub where the company in question may have contributed to.

Non-compliance is not necessarily a malicious act: It is important to keep in mind that violations are not necessarily malicious; often times, non-compliance with Free Software license terms are based in ignorance of best practices. Additionally, even if you get through to those specifically dealing with legal issues in a non-compliant organization, there is unfortunately also a fair amount of misunderstanding or ignorance of Free Software legal and licensing issues within the legal profession. As Hanlon’s Razor states: “Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence”.

“Accidental/unintentional non-compliance” is nevertheless losing credibility: That being said, Hanlon’s Razor is merely a general observation, not an immutable natural law. Conversations and information around Free Software licensing have grown significantly in the past few decades, and many professional software developers and IT lawyers should have a passing understanding of Free Software licensing and the obligations that come with it. Ignorance as a defence can therefore only go so far, and especially with large entities handling large projects, can often cease to be credible.

In certain cases, it is also possible that companies have strategically neglected their licensing obligations for a number of reasons. One possibility is that putting in the work to ensure full disclosure and compliance might take up too much time, effort, and/or cost, and a particular company may choose to ignore the problem in favour of utilizing their workforce in other priorities.

We should always keep in mind that the reasons given by a violator may explain past non-compliance, but it should never be used to justify and/or excuse continued and ongoing non-compliance. For individuals seeking compliance, it may nonetheless ultimately be more productive and worthwhile to focus on practical strategies that ensure that the end result is compliance, rather than to assign blame.

Some tips for when you are enforcing your rights

Bearing all the observations above in mind, if you suspect that an organization is violating the obligations of a Free Software license, by withholding disclosure or the CCS, and you’d like to enforce these license obligations by requesting Free Software disclosure, here are some things to keep in mind.

Be aware of the kinds of Free Software components present in the systems that you are seeking the source code for. This allows you to also understand which Free Software licenses apply for the device or software in question, and therefore the precise license obligations that the potential violator is under. Awareness of your legal rights, and their legal obligations to provide disclosure, will allow you to be more assertive in pushing for compliance.

You should also be prepared for efforts by violators to resist making substantive changes to their practices that would result in compliance, and sometimes can resort to defensive measures in an attempt to stop your enforcement efforts. Persistence is unfortunately necessary in order to see the process through to your end goal of proper disclosure.

Additionally, the FSF and the SFC have also developed the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL-Enforcement (the Principles), which lays out their recommendations on how community users can go about enforcing licensing obligations in a manner that enables users to understand the violator’s situation without excusing the violation, but rather to allow for collaboration to bring the violator into compliance.

An important takeaway as well from the FSF and SFC’s perspective in creating these Principles is that the focus of enforcement processes should always be on bringing about compliance with licensing obligations. Indeed, they stress that:

“[c]opyleft licenses do not state specific enforcement methodologies (other than license termination itself) in part because the real world situation of GPL violations varies; rigidity impedes success.

In particular, this list of principles purposely does not seek to create strict criteria and/or “escalation and mediation rules” for enforcement action. Efforts to do that limit the ability of copyright holders to use copyleft licenses for their intended effect: to stand up for the rights of users to copy, modify, and redistribute free software.”

Concluding remarks

Free Software licensing formalizes our ability as users to enjoy the four freedoms of Free Software. Without proper adherence to these licensing obligations, and without the ability to enforce these rights, the proper and guaranteed enjoyment of our user freedoms will be at risk.

Unfortunately, the history of Free Software license enforcement has shown that often, large amounts of effort has to be expended in order to for users to be able to properly enjoy these freedoms. Nicole’s experience in this example is indicative of how much time and effort currently needs to be spent in order to effectively enjoy what is actually a legal right for users, especially from larger companies that work with digital technology.

Nevertheless, this example does indicate that some positive changes have taken hold in the past decades since the early days of GPL enforcement, where compliance had to be litigated in, and enforced by, the courts. In this example case, despite being initially defensive and protective over their CCS and Free Software disclosures, SumUp has since been relatively proactive in taking steps to ensure Free Software license compliance with their devices, which is always good to see. This can be indicative that companies are progressively becoming more aware of Free Software legal requirements, and growing awareness of their obligations to comply.

We therefore encourage all our readers to start asking questions about your devices and the software that they contain. When more users hold vendors of digital technologies accountable, even if it is just through a simple request for the CCS and Free Software disclosures, this can be a way to force companies to have to substantively conceptualize and understand their obligations in a digital society where openness and collaboration has been baked into many of the software components that enable their products to function.

Nicole’s efforts show that individuals can have outsized positive impacts on software freedom, and many little steps like Nicole’s, when taken together, can amount to a large enough movement to further develop the Free Software ecosystem in a positive direction.

If you have a legal or licensing question related to Free Software that is not covered here or in any of our other resources, you can consider asking our License Questions team by sending them an email at licence-questions@fsfe.org.

Support FSFE

Mit der Firefox-Version 142 verbessert Mozilla unter anderem den strengen Modus von Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) für eine bessere Darstellung.

Das chinesische Start-up DeepSeek hat in aller Stille sein neuestes Modell mit der Versionsnummer 3.1 auf die Plattform Hugging Face hochgeladen und erneut für Aufmerksamkeit in aller Welt…

Ein neues System für Zertifikatssperrlisten: Firefox 142 führt CRLite ein. Die lokale, komplette Prüfung widerrufener Zertifikate ist sicherer und schneller.

Sleek ist eine hübsche grafische Oberfläche für eine Planungsmethode, die auf einer simplen Textdatei - todo.txt - basiert. Besonders nützlich erweist sich dabei die Funktion, Aufgaben auszublenden, die erst in der Zukunft wichtig werden.

Der X.Org-Fork XLibre ist jetzt im COPR-Repository von Fedora zu finden. Die Installation der Pakete ersetzt den herkömmlichen X.Org-Server mit dem Fork.

Thunderbird 142 verbessert die Handhabung des beliebten Open-Source-E-Mail-Clients mit einigen kleinen Verbesserungen und behebt viele Fehler aus den Vorgängerversionen.

Wie 3D-Modelle erstellt, Materialien gestaltet und Kamerafahrten umgesetzt werden, zeigt dieser Blender-Workshop für Einsteiger mit Vorerfahrung in Photoshop oder Illustrator. (Golem Karrierewelt, Blender)

Zu den offiziellen Bildschirmen für den Raspberry Pi gesellt sich ab sofort ein Modell mit 5 Zoll. Es verfügt wie schon die erhältliche 7-Zoll-Variante über einen Touchscreen.