That depends a lot on how the license gets interpreted and how license violations are handled by the local law. The argument for why the end user cannot do anything about GPL violation is that the violated contract is between upstream and the “bad” developer - the upstream project gave the bad developer access to their source code under the condition that the license stays the same. You as the end user only get exposed to the bad developer’s license, so you can’t do anything. It’s the upstream who must force them to extend a proper license to you.
However there was also a case recently where the FSF argued that this interpretation / handling of the situation is against the spirit of GPL and I think they won, so… Yeah, it’s just unclear. Which is normal for legal texts (IMHO intentionally, but I’m not here to rag on lawyers, so I’ll leave it at that).
That depends a lot on how the license gets interpreted and how license violations are handled by the local law. The argument for why the end user cannot do anything about GPL violation is that the violated contract is between upstream and the “bad” developer - the upstream project gave the bad developer access to their source code under the condition that the license stays the same. You as the end user only get exposed to the bad developer’s license, so you can’t do anything. It’s the upstream who must force them to extend a proper license to you.
However there was also a case recently where the FSF argued that this interpretation / handling of the situation is against the spirit of GPL and I think they won, so… Yeah, it’s just unclear. Which is normal for legal texts (IMHO intentionally, but I’m not here to rag on lawyers, so I’ll leave it at that).
Any details on that case you remember? Sounds fascinating.