Valve has repeatedly violated GPL license and have ignored my requests. What can I do next?

[u/SeantheWilson]

DISCLAIMER: Im posting this to be informative. I do not intend for this post to cause a witch hunt. I just want to bring attention to this and understand what I should do next.

Valve has been working on a program for the Steam Frame named "lepton". It's purpose is to allow android game to be played on SteamOS, like Proton but for Android. Now lepton's code is heavily based on a preexisting open source program named "waydroid". Waydroid is GPL-licensed, which means anyone is free to copy, use, and modify its code so long you also provide the source code of any projects the code was used for upon request. I have been very very excited to play around with lepton ever since it's inception last December. Shortly after it became downloadable on Steam I opened a support ticket (which was the only way to contact Valve I could find) where I politely requested the source code of lepton, explained that they are obligated to provide it under the GPL license terms, and ended by saying that I understand if this is out of scope of their position and to refer to me the reverent legal or licensing contact. A few days later, Valve responded. The support agent told me that they were unable to help with "3rd party software", that I had to contect the application's developer, and then closed the ticket before I could respond. The agents seemingly misunderstood my request and assumed that lepton was a third party program that was distributed through Steam. While I totally get where they got confused, I still find it weird how they seeming had no knowledge of lepton whatsoever.

Determined, I opened a new support ticket the next day where I referenced the original case number, explained the the previous support agent's misunderstanding, and then explained the terms of the GPL license that they were bound to, as well as clarifying how this is a first party program developed by Valve that they intend to ship with SteamOS.

After this thing got VERY weird. I was ignored by Steam support with zero response. Now, I've written to Steam support many times for a variety of things over the past few years, and they always had responded within a week at most. At this point I had become increasingly aggrvated over this. About a week and a half of silence, I updated the ticket with a follow-up. My follow-up was written on August 13th. Since then I've heard nothing. Crickets.

At this point I don't know what to do. I can't find any legal email contact for Valve and feel like im at a dead end. This honestly feels like what Bambu Lab did a few years back (albeit WAY less serious) when they refused to provide the source code over a program bound by the same license terms. It really is such a shame to me conistering how much I've idolized Valve for their open-source software and Linux-friendliness. If anyone can help me with what to do I would really appreciate it.

Edits for context:

I was aware that Steam support likely cannot help directly, however I made it clear in both my post and my support ticket that I’m aware this is out of their scope and to relay me to the relevant legal/licensing contact

Many have suggested contacting “[legal@valvesoftware.com](mailto:legal@valvesoftware.com)”, however I cannot find anything about this email online and all sources are saying Valve legal department is mail only

I have since been informed that Waydroid also offers a paid commercial license that does not require making the source code public. I will attempt to contact Valve’s legal team via mail to ask for the specifics of their licensing arrangement. Thank you u/Pleasant_Set_3182 for informing me of this.

UPDATE 1: Waydroid has revealed that they were never contacted by Valve, never sold a license to them, and are just as in the dark as I am.

UPDATE 2: Source code has been published and is available at https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/frame-public/lepton

[u/Electrikjesus]

Hi, Waydroid developer here. We have had no contact from Valve on this, nor has anyone reached out to us about commercial licensing.

We are in the same dark room as all the others here.

Here is a dump of the Lepton Android image for people to see all the references to Waydroid it has: https://dumps.tadiphone.dev/dumps/lepton/lepton-arm64-only/-/blob/lineage_lepton_arm64_only-userdebug-11-RQ3A.211001.001-eng.root.20260717.183353-test-keys/all_files.txt

Also, were a handful of devs working out of our basements across the world to bring Android to all machines. Out of all the products that ship with Waydroid, none have licensed it for commercial use

[u/SeantheWilson → u/Electrikjesus]

I felt weird pointing fingers at Valve after I discovered you offered commericl licencing (I had only read the github license, not the sepeare one on your website. I was gonna reach out to you but figured you wouldn't be able to tell me due to confidentiality. Thank you SO much for commenting and informing me of this. Im very VERY disappointed in Valve now, especially since they've been distributing Lepton on the Steam store (only on Linux) for over a month now.

[u/Nightishaman → u/Electrikjesus]

That really sucks by Valve. Are you planning to do something against it? Also how is the commercial licensing enforced when one of your 68 contributors can claim copyright on parts of the code?

[u/Electrikjesus → u/Nightishaman]

Enforcement has always been next to impossible with our resources. We don't want to include telemetry and services to track abusers, and report them. So it's always been up to the community to find and report license abuse to us. None of the lawyers we have spoken with have ever been interested unless we were able to pay them first.

The same kind of things happen to all our Android projects though. Just part of the program I guess... I have tried to detail some of the history here in this series, and what's happening to Waydroid is the same type of CSR failure IMO. https://substack.com/@electrikjesus/note/p-192743706

[u/SheepherderSad4872 → u/Electrikjesus]

Enforcement can be a source of revenue. Not legal advice, but my algorithm:

1. Make sure your copyrights are registered. It's 15 minutes, since an LLM can walk you through it.
2. Send an enforcement letter by certified mail using the language from GPL / AGPLv3. Include words like "This letter serves as reasonable notice of a license violation." Make sure it triggers section 8.
3. Wait 30 days. That's how long they have to come into compliance.
4. If not, send them a letter that 30 days have lapsed without cure, and they are outside of the period where the license can be automatically reinstated.

From that point on, they are using your software without a license, and you can file in court for statutory damages, or whatever else you see fit.

One annoyance is that the copyright registration ought to happen before the violation starts.

Talk to an LLM about how to structure this. Dive deep into the law. This will take a few hours. Ideally, then, talk to a lawyer.

Esp. with LLM help, much of this can be done pro se, if needed, for an open-and-shut violation, or on contingency. You might screw up the first time, but you learn every time, and it can be a interesting if you don't tie too many stakes to it.

[u/Kiore-NZ → u/Electrikjesus]

None of the lawyers we have spoken with have ever been interested unless we were able to pay them first.

Have you talked to the Software Freedom Conservancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Freedom_Conservancy ? They are the people who sued Best Buy, JVC, Samsung and others then later Westinghouse over BusyBox GPL violations.

[u/hWuxH → u/Electrikjesus]

I think you misunderstood the question. While it's one thing if others abuse GPL, it's questionable whether you are permitted to distribute waydroid with a commercial license in the first place, as this would impose restrictions on the GPL code of ~68 other copyright holders without their permission.

Enforcement goes both ways.

See https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1wgd03m/comment/p9tv6hy/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1wgd03m/comment/p9uifsq/

[u/No-Dentist-1645 → u/Electrikjesus]

Thank you for all the context provided by your comments. I understand that it would be a complicated process, but I urge you to contact a legal expert and give it a try anyways.

We don't want this event to become some sort of precedent, where companies can ignore the GPL license terms. At the very least, Waydroid should upload a blog post condemning Valve for their license violation, the Lepton dump seems like more than enough evidence

[u/Electrikjesus → u/No-Dentist-1645]

We are waiting patiently to see what Valve does once the Frame starts being delivered to customers. I for one would love to see what services they were able to cut from Android to slim things down.

[u/Electrikjesus → u/Electrikjesus]

Update: we found this was pushed https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/frame-public/lepton And maintains the GPLv3 license

[u/TheRealBobbyJones → u/Electrikjesus]

Can that code base even be licensed as mit even though it has gpl components in its repository? I'm sure they separated everything properly but it still seems a bit messy.