Louis Rossmann could sue John Deere for GPL violation [video]
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I'm somehow confronted with this with my VW car. The battery is close to dead, and I want to replace it. I can do that. Yet the car needs to be informed that it now has a new battery in order optimize its power management (it's not an electric car, it's basically the most simple modern VW).
I need to go to the dealer and have them change the battery for me and reset the battery status, which is maybe 100€ in addition to the battery cost.
If the source code would be publicly accessible, probably a cheap OBD-2 adapter would be capable of doing this.
These give you everything from the service manual (detailed info on how to do any repair operation, with steps and photos), diagnostic code scanning and guided troubleshooters, and access to the car's electronics for putting ECUs into service mode (like the electronic parking brake) or reprogramming them with updated firmware (which is complicated and you probably don't need to do it). The service steps will interface with the car's ECUs - if you need to change the transmission fluid, the software will prepare the transmission, help you get it up to temperature and maintain that temperature, and then reset the calibration of the transmission at the end. And it'll show the technician each mechanical step they have to do along the way. Very advanced stuff.
You can generally get this software a normal person, but it's a expensive subscription:
https://hyundaitechinfo.com/ https://bmwtechinfo.bmwgroup.com/
You can usually find cracked versions online, but recently they've been getting more and more locked down.
As for your battery replacement thing, there are 3rd party phone apps which can do it. You'll just need a compatible OBD adapter. I don't know what it is for VW, but for BMW BimmerLink gives you diagnostic info and lets you reset the battery, and BimmerCode lets you change some config options in the car ECUs to enable some useful small QoL features. I'm sure there is similar software for VAG cars.
Presumably the source code to that toolkit would be just as good, and having access to the car's source code would let you build your own toolkit.
> If the source code would be publicly accessible, probably a cheap OBD-2 adapter would be capable of doing this.
Al that DRM also makes it neigh impossible to self service your car these days.
You can also adjust features (roll up windows with remote, etc). Run diagnostics in real time while driving, test every switch/sensor on the car. Also, it is needed if you do a brake job on the rear brakes to open/close the parking brake so you can put the pads in.
I don't believe you need to recode the battery if you replace with the exact same battery but you need to change it if you don't put in the OEM one [1]
Yeah we don't have the source code. But with long coding adaptations in the system you can do a large portion of what you need to do (engine/trans swaps). If going deeper is needed there are companies who reflash/recode ECUs but that is about as deep as you can go without doing independent module hacking.
Typical car batteries are not yet so 'smart'. The post-battery-swap 'coding' that many euro vehicles need is to instruct the car-side BMS about the battery's characteristics so that it can tune things like its start-stop routine, alternator behavior, etc. to optimize battery life and resilience.
If you put in the same battery it isn't an issue. You need to recode if you change the size or type.
It IS incredibly silly that you need a specialized tool to code the new battery, but unfortunately that's the direction the auto industry seems to be going.
It's not silly. It's ridiculous that car manufacturers abuse their customers this way. And people wonder why I stick with old cars.
Finally, cars are doing a lot more with the onboard starter battery. Or in case of hybrids, a lot less. A modern car is never truly off once the key is out. The BMS will need to know the real capacity of the battery so it can reserve enough charge to start the car.
We're demanding a lot from the car battery lately and the BMS needs to know where it stands.
I am still riding a motorcycle with no battery and kickstarter. That is the ultimate reliability and dependability, the last thing you want in the middle of the mountains is the vehicle to stop because it does not have the latest monthly Windows update for .Net framework that works only OTA and there is no signal in that area. I am exaggerating a bit, but only for artistic purposes :)
This remedy of compelling a party to do something they agreed to do is called 'specific performance', and US courts only even consider doing this when real property (land) is involved.
For copyright infringement, generally what's available is injunctive relief preventing further infringement, disgorgement of profits, and statutory damages and attorneys fees as permitted by title 17. The injunction and disgorgement are the killers here that actually scare would-be infringers, and they mean that in most cases what you actually end up with is a settlement.
It would extend the right to repair to the software that we write.
Courts force the sale of companies (etc) that don't involve real property. I think maybe they're reluctant and prefer monetary remedies but if what you say is correct that would neuter contracts pretty severely.
Imagine if you pirated photoshop and the courts retroactively forced you to install Adobe spyware to comply with the license. Obviously the most the court could do is fine you or prevent further infringement.
Just because the plaintiffs aren't operating billion dollar businesses doesn't make their infringement claims less valid. The terms of the GPL explicitly spell out Deere's obligations. If they ignore them it converts to plain old copyright infringement with damages due for every illegal copy made.
What if you host watch parties of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?
What if its address is on El Camino Real?
I'm curious, what would that look like in this case (for a GPL violation)?
Do you need to track down every single person who contributed code under GPL and get them to agree?
Generally the way GPL has been in the courts, the suing party won't just take some money and walk away happy, they'll ask for the infringement to end (one way or the other). That would make other copyright holders happy too.
https://www.axios.com/2022/08/04/supreme-court-john-roberts-...
The Supreme court since FDR has been very resistant to role back the role of federal government, they have no problems smacking down state laws, but when it comes to rolling back federal laws or regulations well....
So here it would be determinative on which "side" the federal government chooses, or if the federal government stays silent which silence IMO is probably the most likely outcome for the federal government.
If they stay out of the fight, I think Deere Loses. If the federal government defends Deere then I think it is more 50/50
Even then, there's still the likelihood they are using GPL code/libraries above and beyond Linux itself.
what?
no, GPL was designed for right to modify source code with no restrictions on what you could use the modified code for, which would include repair.
Just a misleading title to drive traffic to his video blog.
Better then, perhaps:
> John Deere might be sued for GPL violation - Louis Rossman [video]
(or even 'should', since that's his angle, not neutral factual reporting)
PS: for the third-party beneficiary option, see the SFC v Vizio case.
With the Right to Repair stuff, in some states, I've put together my own lobbying plans. In others, I tried to figure out who had the best foothold there already with an actionable plan & pre-existing experience winning on similar issues and funded them. Some examples of this were washington, rather than do it myself I gave USPIRG a fair amount of funding to get it done, which is helpful since the charlie brown affair sullied my reputation among some of the legislators.
Even in states where we do our own lobbying, there is usually a large level of partnership with organizations that already exist within the state, and a microgrant program where we fund a bunch of small groups to educate locals/organize people prior to making a legislative/lobbying push.
Is it working well in practise?
If you were to start fresh at solving the problem again, what would you do differently?
I don’t know what you are referring to. Mind explaining?
He then said he cannot negotiate with bullies, and the legislature said if the opposition won't negotiate, then we can't pass a bill.
Imagine if I said that I refused to be present at my murder trial because I didn't like the clerk. Would I get off trial for murder? Hell no. But it works for them.
He makes broad assumptions and undermines trust in our entire industry, and claims me calling him "clueless" in the thumbnail is beyond the pale - that's just too much! As a result, I am hands off in that state. I supply money and resources to people who do the work in that state, and keep my name off of it all. There was one senator who was on my side, Doug Erickson, but he died of COVID....
The irony of it all, one of the companies he represents, Samsung, actually DID start installing tiktok on customer phones without their consent, a point I went over 2 years later. This happened months after the legislature tossed right to repair because of concerns about repair shops stealing student data/copies of their homework... I'm not kidding. My demeanor in this video is kind of off the wall, but.. can you blame me? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUThdBfy_-U
Offtopic: is it true what he says about Apple pairing their sleep sensor chip to their security signatures? That would be such a scumbag move.
Try replacing an angle sensor in a A2442. It won't work, even if it is from another Macbook. It has to have GSX run on it for it to work.
What we do now when they're corroded is do our best to try and clean up the existing one. Maybe desolder the hall sensor, use a fine tipped iron like the Hakko 2032 w/ T30-KN tip to "file" the pins and pads as much as we can, and put it back on. Sometimes, it works.
When it doesn't, we tell the customer "I'm sorry, no sleep for you. Only manual sleeping!" It sucks.
The places with access to GSX, are the places not permitted to do component level board repair on machines with liquid damage.
The places without access to GSX, are the places with the best ratings in the country for component level repair on machines with liquid damage.
The world is a meme.
No. My channel was never started with the goal of having 100m subscribers. In my initial musings, I thought, MAX subscribership, BEST CASE scenario was 300 subscribers, since I estimated the people going down the LCD-cell-only/component level repair rabbithole with Apple products to be around 300 at the time 10 yrs ago. and that assumes 100% of them watch/subscribe to my channel, which is a lofty figure.
getting to 1.7 million subscribers is ridiculous. This wasn't supposed to happen. A cursory look at my older videos, total lack of preparation, production quality, etc should make clear that the goal was never widespread viewership.
but, if 1.7 million people ARE viewing, if I've blown out my initial best-case-scenario by 3 zeros and change.... why go out of my way to do it all differently? Why adapt my content to people who admit they don't want to watch anyway?
It's not a movie, it's a 9 minute video... I totally get if someone doesn't want to watch a 9 minute video, but... I'm not making content for them.
I wasn't trying to get big, I was just producing what I felt like producing.. if doing that got me to 1.7 mil, maybe being myself is the thing to keep doing.
Going back to the point of my inquiry: If you are serious about pushing this issue into the mainstream rather than just being just a channel that a certain small segment of the population happens to enjoy, then wouldn't you want to expand the audience to be as large as possible? Like it or not, there is a large percentage of potential supporters who are just not going to sit around and watch what is typically 20+ minutes of rambling.
If you are not really serious about this then I understand your hesitation but then why the involvement with Futo?
It's not just the 10 minute video they think is boring, it's anything I produce. They're not viewers, they're commenters when something frontpages reddit or hn.
and that's fine - people don't have to watch or like my stuff. I just don't produce content for people who will NEVER watch my stuff. It's like fogo de chao trying to cater to vegans.
I could make this video 30 seconds, but it loses its effect. It loses the story, which is what draws people in who otherwise wouldn't care. Without the history, the details, the villain, and the point - do you honestly believe a 15 short of "hey bro john deere uses gpl stuff and doesn't release it rawr" would have the same effect as this video? Even 10% the effect, of getting normal people to care about farmers getting screwed? I doubt it.
I could be wrong, but as far as "Pushing into mainstream" - it made CBC news, at least half a dozen other news stations, got a 50 page report from the FTC, made it to the president's desk, was mentioned in an executive order, and a bill just passed a week ago.. I don't know how much more mainstream it gets unless the issue gets made into a boy band.
Honestly I think we really need someone else to lead and be the public face of this movement. Someone who is known and liked by the mass population. Look at other great movements in this country's history. There is always some character that captures the publics imagination wither through charm or just insane grit.
We can't JUST have a richard stallman like character who sticks to his way of doing things stubbornly and expect to see the finish line. Maybe this movement has already reached escape velocity and it does not matter. Maybe someone at iFixit or someone else that I am not thinking of is already that public face that can reach the masses. Maybe someone is waiting in the wings.
I'm reminded of an event I experienced when I took a senior level Linux Kernel class in college. The class was taught by this hardcore GPL and privacy loving professor who had worked at Bell Labs and had started several startups in the open source/IT sector.
We had a class of 50 people and the first day he told everyone that this class is one of the hardest in the university and that he does not care if you struggle, he would not accommodate you in any way because it is worth learning the Kernel the hard way by being thrown head first into the ocean. He acted with such determination of his way of thinking, that I imagine it really scared a lot of the students. Well, the next class we had lost about 50% of the student body (including the 10 or so women in the class).
It was a grueling class and one of the most knowledgable classes I ever took but now ten years later I look at how the CS graduates i'm hiring at my company now live their entire lives in a smartphone and only use a regular PC when it is absolutely necessary (for work). They barely know how the OS and underlying components in the machine work.
It makes me think, that in hindsight that professor was totally wrong. He caused people who may have dipped their toes into the water and joined the other side to give up too early. Now we have a reduced pool of people who truly understand why all of this matters.
Some of those people might now be like the people I have to hire now. In the case of my developers, they do pretty good work for what they need to do. They don't write kernel code. How many people do that? They build CRUD apps. For these people: The companies won. They live in the Apple/Microsoft/whatever ecosystem and don't care about fundamentals because to them, life is fine. I hope this is not what is going on with right to repair.
Have you watched any Farmer Youtuber channels? I have watched a handful of "Gen-Z" farming youtube channels and I seem to notice there is a lot of love for John Deere since they sponsor social media events here and there. I remember one youtube farming couple in Nebraska discuss right to repair in youtube livestreams when the first news of farmers hacking their equipment made all the tech sites. They seemed quite indifferent to the movement as a whole and discussed how they always have their rep available when they need help. Sure this is an anecdote but it stuck with me because its making me scared that the same thing that I am experiencing with my developer hires is a generation wide problem regardless of industry.
Have we scared off the masses already just like my professor did?
Louis, don't mess with the success on your channel by changing now.
But, creating some content targeted at the mainstream would be a very good idea. Don't do it instead of your existing approach, just in addition to.
It's the same thing so really it comes down to a matter of preference and experience.
I am pretty much a Windows developer as that's generally been what I've done, and have very little experience writing code for Linux and other operating systems. I could do it in a pinch, and with some time I could adapt and become a more open source based developer, but that is not the environment where I am most productive.
I do agree it's up to preference and experience though at the end of the day. Having experience in closed source tools can be very valuable because the cost of that knowledge is higher. Not everybody can just tinker with it.
Generally, but have no direct knowledge of John Deere's situation, Linux is used because it's usually possible to have drivers which are already written for the various hardware which is desired in more embedded systems. Having to write or port something like a wi-fi driver to a different OS is very non-trivial but wi-fi is generally considered table-stakes now for lots of devices. So it saves significant cost and development time to choose Linux simply because you can get off the shelf drivers for your electrical design.
Deere is a big Windows shop and it was not fun trying to develop for Linux in a VMWare VM, and corporate IT seemed to have special prejudice for our unit for deviating from the standard Windows suite.
If they want a heavyweight modern OS that someone else maintains and that Deere, and not Microsoft, can control, the only real choice is Linux.
Nevertheless, if I were working through a product that involves "redistribution" of any of it, and I really didn't want to deal with any potential issues with compliance with the GNU requirements, I'd spec out that the whole product runs [free|net]BSD and runs only 3rd party apache/bsd/purchased licensed code/libraries. This isn't really even a difficult option.
Freebsd has pretty good compatibility, and if you're buying in sufficient volumes or making / integrating boards from scratch you can just stick to the paved roads. It may not end up being quite as cheap from a BOM perspective, though.
The SFC blog post doesn't mention any specific program but, in the article in The Register, the SFC director is quoted talking about Linux in particular. But Linux is just GPLv2, so doesn't have an anti-Tivoisation [1] clause. In other words, you're free to put it on hardware in binary form (even after modifying it) and sell that hardware, and you're under no obligation to give away the source code to it or any of your own software.
On the other hand, I'm sure the director of the SFC knows a lot more about this situation than I do, so I'm sure that there's something I'm missing.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t...
However, with both GPLv2 and GPLv3, a vendor of an aggregation of copyleft and proprietary software can legally cause the the proprietary software to stop working when the copyleft software is modified. I think this hasn't been tested in court though, but the license as they are written both allow this. This would essentially brick your car/tractor until you rewrote that proprietary software from scratch.
https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
I don't even understand what they are expecting to get. I don't see how being sent a link to https://www.gnu.org/software/bash or similar for the various software that may be installed suddenly makes your life better even though you can just google for it.
There is an ongoing case trying to establish the users right to sue over noncompliance of the GPL, see https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html, but you're right that currently only the copyright holder can sue. edit "can" is the wrong word, "have successfully sued."
That said, there's thousands of copyright holders for Linux, if Rossman isn't one he can probably find one easily.
His goal is to fund a lawyer to look into the issue. And looks to me he would just like screwing with John Deere.
That Louis Rossmann would want to mess with John Deere?
He would never!
definitely just trolling
Isn't the whole point of the GPL that the user has rights to the software?
The copyright owner is the only person who can sue people for violating the license of the software they created.
Copyright owners are not forced to stop people from infringing their copyrights. If they want they can allow people to infringe their copyright without punishment. Sometimes they just don't care and sometimes copyright infringement can be beneficial for the owner.
For the copyright violations, yes. But I'd imagine a skilled lawyer could make a suit against a company for a violation of the contract between the consumer and company on the grounds that the consumer knowingly bought a product that included those clauses and the company did not follow through with delivering the product as sold.
Actually, copyright is now implicit. There is NO right to distribute software and NO right to create derivative works. Copyright gives those rights exclusively to the copyright holder.
The GPL makes it legally possible to distribute and create derivative works. Without that license, you have no such right, and can be sued (for damages) by the copyright holder. Proving damages can be difficult.
In any case, the license is the only thing that allows that behavior. Without it, there is no right to do it, and thus restrictions are moot.
The GPL would then be a number of permissions similar to:
You are hereby given permission to give other people a all-permissions-granted patent license of all patents that you own, and along side that license you are given permission to include my copyrighted source code, and optionally in addition to that source code you may then add a compiled version along side that source code.
No restrictions and depending on how one want to interpret "in addition/along side", not even a condition.
This has not been established. And while there are strong economical interests in this sense… it doesn't necessarily mean they are lawful.
That's the stated rationale for the license, but not the legal framework that it is recognized under. "Copyleft" licenses are legally copyright licenses, and a violation of the GPL is simply a copyright violation. Whoever bring a suit must have standing to sue for copyright violations.
https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2022/1/31/sfc-v-vi...
It is a bit of a stretch to even say that the GPL even has the required elements of a contract between SFC and Vizio. (And the GPL was never designed to work this way anyway.)
How do you offer someone a contract without ever sending it to them? How do you argue that Visio concurrently offered the terms of the GPL and ignored it? Either there’s an offer or there’s not
It seems to me that Vizio simply ignored the GPL, and the issue is precisely that they didn’t offer it to their customers. Yes, they were supposed to under copyright law, but they didn’t.
At the end of the day, for this to be a valid contract, it’ll have to be shown that:
* Vizio offered the source code to SFC (did this actually happen?)
* SFC accepted that contract (did this happen?)
* there was an exchange of value (this one is easy: the TV)
* that they were capable of entering into the contract (again, easy)
* that there was a meeting of the minds (it might be a defense here that Vizio was just blindly copy and pasting shit!)
You are indeed right that Vizio can probably get around SFC current suit by arguing that they did not enter into the GPL contract and just deliberately decided to use the code without a copyright license, but that then opens them up to higher damages under the inevitable copyright lawsuit.
Sort of. The relevant section is:
> 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
> a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
> b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
If the company elects to go with option b, then yes - the GPL does allow you to request "source code" for what you never used.
Provide damages of some sort, stop distributing program?
This sounds like the most likely outcome it this is successful.
If you and I sign a contract whereby you agree to pay 5$ to any stranger who calls you some name, I very much doubt a stranger who does so and doesn't receive their dollars would have any right to sue you. Of course, I could sue you for failing to perform the agreed contract.
It's also not a contract between the distributor and the person receiving a copy from them, since contracts can't be automatically assigned to pieces of property, they must happen between people.
I very much doubt the SFC's case will succeed. I fully expect that they will be found not to have any standing to sue as someone who is in no way a party of the GPL. By the way, it's obvious that it wouldn't be tried by a copyright court, as the SFC claims no copyright over the code in question. I expect that the lower court will now confirm that they have no standing under contract law either, and the case will be dismissed.
Note that I fully support the idea of a right to repair. I just don't think it can be achieved in this way, and believe instead it must be enshrined in legislation and state regulations, not crafty uses of copyright law.
Actually Conservancy also are representatives of copyright holders in Linux and other software used on Vizio devices. So if they lose the third-party beneficiary suit, there will be a copyright angle they can pursue as well.
GPL lawsuits aren't about hardware repair, they are about software repair and the rights given to end-users by the GPL license/contract. You don't need source code to replace broken components on a tractor, you need repairer/vendor software that performs pairing of DRM-locked parts.
Having said all that, I support the right to repair movement. I commend him for being a gadfly and a leader on this issue. The right of ownership of the things you buy and the right to repair what you own are extremely important, fundamental rights. Without them, we are all reduced to tenants in a neo-feudalist dystopia.
That said, he doesn't make clear what, if any, John Deer hardware he owns. I don't think he's the right person to sue.
However, he could use his influence and audience to help any farmer willing to take on John Deer to get a lawsuit together.
Can you explain this in more detail ? I thought that was the case.
As an extreme example, if I wrote a software license that makes you my lifelong slave for using my software, and you use it without becoming my slave, then no judge is going to enforce slavery upon you. But they might fine you for stealing my software.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t...
However, with both GPLv2 and GPLv3, a vendor of an aggregation of copyleft and proprietary software can legally cause the the proprietary software to stop working when the copyleft software is modified. I think this hasn't been tested in court though, but the license as they are written both allow this. This would essentially brick your car/tractor until you rewrote that proprietary software from scratch.
https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
- You could have to stop violating the person's copyright.
- You could have to pay damages
- You could have to go to jail
Example: Lets say Lindows is a piece of software whose license only lets you distribute it in Louisiana. If you start distributing it in California and get sued you don't have to do something like transport all your clients to Louisiana and distribute the software to them a second time. You just will be prevented from doing any further distribution in California.
"Specific performance is an equitable remedy in the law of contract, whereby a court issues an order requiring a party to perform a specific act, such as to complete performance of the contract."[1]
I understand that you are saying that it does not apply in copyright case, but why?
The only time anyone ever "do[es] time" is in criminal matters. Copyright infringement is a civil matter, and, in general, the only remedy the courts can provide is monetary. However, refusing to abide by the courts' orders can land you in contempt of court, which could (won't always) involve jail.
I do believe that the US law is Draconian, but you can't say "oh Swartz! yeah just a guy, let's bully him to oblivion with hundreds of years of jail time and million on fines" while at the same time say "Oh John Deere, that's a corporation, please follow the licensing of the software you use". It doesn't seem right to me.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license_litigati...
Whether any company in it's right mind would find it preferable to settle the case by abiding by the terms of the license or not is debatable of course.
Whether Rossmann is the copyright owner or not is a minor point given he could throw his money and expertise behind whoever is.
I am pretty sure he can convince copyright owner go give him power of attorney for specific case.
You can be forced to do whatever you agreed to do in a binding contract, if the action or contract isn't illegal.
You don't present any basis for your claim. A court case like this could settle the matter.
Since the GPL requires the derivative source to be released, anyone has standing to sue since anyone can request that code.
The GPL is not a magic spell; you can't use it to force your enemies to do things they don't want to do. As a copyright license, it is used to protect your own work from being abused, and nothing else. And it is an agreement between the licensor and the licensee, irrespective of who else it benefits, so only they have standing.
On the other hand, court orders in many ways are magic spells, and there are circumstances where you can get the court to order Specific Performance as remedy. Courts don't love Specific Performance, you won't get far asking a court for this when monetary compensation seems effective, but sometimes the Court can see that's not an appropriate remedy and will order Specific Performance.
Specific Performance requires that you do what the court demands, if you won't do what they demand that's contempt for which you can be imprisoned.
IANAL but I think you need to the a copyright holder to effectively enforce these terms through the court.
If you violate a contract with your employer and don't deliver a product in time, I don't think the customers can sue you. Instead, as far as I know, the customers will sue the company and the company will sue you to cover the costs.
This is definitely wrong. If they refuse to provide source code, they are not abiding by the terms of the license, and thus presumably have no right to distribute that code. However, unless you are a copyright holder of the code they are distributing, there is no harm to you as a third party if the distributor is not respecting the terms of the license of the creator.
At best, if they lose a lawsuit with the copyright holder and are forced to stop distributing the software and/or recall already distributed versions, you could then sue them for damages caused by their irresponsible behavior.
This is at best a simplification. The most common case is that a company has two options: Either provide the source code alongside every copy of the program, so that every recipient of the program has the source code already, or, alongside the program, provide a written offer, valid for three years, to provide source code on request. This offer, while required if the company chooses this option, is not part of the license! If a company does not provide source code on request, they have broken the promise provided by the offer, not the license, and can be sued for simply failing to uphold their promise. It then does not matter what the original licence says, or who the copyright holders are.
And, of course, if a company provides neither the source code, nor such an offer of source code, they have already broken the license, and can be sued immediately; there is no need for anyone to request the source code. Doing so is just something many people do as an act of pure courtesy.
By whom? In what way is the promise binding on that company? I can see some sense if the offer is provided to anyone receiving the binary from the company, in which case you could argue that it is a part of the distribution contract between the company and the recipient. But a third party doesn't seem to have any relationship, even if the promise nominally mentions ant third party.
At best, you could argue that the original receiver of the code could sue the company for not providing code to a third party as per the promise.
> And, of course, if a company provides neither the source code, nor such an offer of source code, they have already broken the license, and can be sued immediately
Yes, but only by a copyright holder of that source code, not by a third party (not even by the person who received the binary code without a copy of the source or a promise to provide it on request).
By the way, it should be noted that, per Stallman, it's perfectly valid for a company to sell GPL-based binaries and only distribute the source code to those who buy the binaries (though of course they must be allowed to distribute it further). So it's absolutely clear that a random person who neither purchased the product nor holds copyright in the GPL work has no standing whatsoever.
Are promises not binding? Can a company not get sued for breaking a promise?
(I agree with the rest of your comment.)
source code modifications are required to be provided, build tools which are not modified from GPL source are not. is this really what someone is going to sue over?