Putting asides the legal details, things must be pretty bad inside Vizio if they'd rather go to court than release the code. Like they can't release the code because they don't know where it is.
For the SFC, the code (or rather, entitlement to receive complete corresponding source) has always been the point [1]. I don't think they ever asked for damages.
Do you think they could be trying to open up the TV firmware, like when the WRT54G settlement launched what became OpenWrt and other open firmware projects?
> Do you think they could be trying to open up the TV firmware
Yes, SFC is indeed trying to open up the software as happened with OpenWrt [1], though in this case the software in question is the operating system instead of the firmware.
I think the SFC also wanted to establish a legal precedent about the rights given by the GPLv2 to users. Unfortunately, such a precedent might not be forthcoming [2].
