SFC-funded lawsuit gets software repair and reinstall for users of AVM routers

AVM chooses not to appeal purchaser's suit that established users' rights on wireless router

January 9, 2025

Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) today announces the conclusion of a lawsuit that we funded and supported in Germany. (As is typical with German cases, SFC was unable to give public updates during the case.) The defendant, Berlin-based AVM, ultimately delivered the necessary information to reinstall modified software on their device. Delivery of this information resolved the lawsuit. The plaintiff was Sebastian Steck, who received a grant from SFC to pursue this work. Steck purchased an AVM router in May 2021 and quickly found that the source code candidate which AVM sent him could not be compiled and reinstalled onto his router. AVM, the largest home router manufacturer in Germany, refused to correct its source code candidate. Steck sued AVM in a Berlin court in July 2023.

Months after the lawsuit was filed, AVM finally provided Steck with all remaining source code that Steck requested, including “the scripts used to control … installation of the library”. Steck brought his claim under copyleft terms of the Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 (LGPLv2.1). As part of the case's resolution, AVM paid Steck's attorney's fees. The appeal deadline elapsed two weeks ago. AVM chose not to appeal the court's ruling on the fees.

The favorable result of this lawsuit exemplifies the power of copyleft — granting users the freedom to modify, repair, and secure the software on their own devices. Companies like AVM receive these immense benefits themselves. This lawsuit reminded AVM that downstream users must receive those very same rights under copyleft.

Historically, lawsuits have focused on the copyrights licensed under GPL (or the GPL and LGPL together). Steck's lawsuit uniquely focused exclusively on users' rights under the LGPL. Steck's work showed that despite being a "Lesser" license than GPL, LGPLv2.1 still guarantees users the right to repair, modify and reinstall modified versions of the software on their device. There is now no doubt that both GPL and LGPL mandate the device owner's ability to make changes to the software in the flash memory so those changes persist across reboots. AVM initially tried to claim that changes in volatile memory (RAM) would suffice, but Steck successfully argued that users must be able to install such changes to the permanent storage. AVM eventually provided the required installation information for just that.

Both SFC and Steck remain frustrated that companies like AVM usually ignore user requests under copyleft until a lawsuit is filed. Nevertheless, we are happy to see that the legal process confirmed Steck's rights, and required AVM to pay Steck's legal costs. “I am pleased that this litigation compelled AVM to provide the compilation and reinstallation information in the filings,” Steck said. “I look forward to them amending their publicly available source code archives with the complete scripts used to control compilation and installation soon.” In the meantime, we at SFC published these updated source code archives ourselves, along with the key court documents in the case.

At SFC we continue to work fervently toward a future where everyone has the practical ability to repair and modify the software on their devices. If you share this desire for change and want to support our efforts to make it a reality, we strongly encourage you to donate now. We are nearing the end of our annual fundraiser and have nearly reached our match goal, but we're not there yet. Anything you can donate to help us will be doubled through our matching sponsors, until the match is reached. Please donate now to take advantage of this opportunity to maximize your impact!