Xiaomi has been in violation of GPL for years (opens in new tab)

Which means, you have to lawyer up and spend vast sums of money to go after people violating your license (GPL here).

Which is why you routinely hear about people violating the GPL - the interested parties have no means to enforce their license, and the counter party likely has deep pockets; deep enough to out last, out spend, and bury the licenser.

  - Yes:

    - Xiaomi sells products outside of China, both through their own website and through Amazon and Walmart. Sue retailers who carry Xiaomi products and sell them in the US and Europe.
    - In theory, this is what the US International Trade Commission can do - block imports of products that violate US  laws. EU probably has similar
    - You can't do anything about Xiaomi with China's kangaroo courts within China's borders, but Xiaomi wants US dollars and Euros too so eventually they'll play ball if you're willing to take this far enough

  - No: 

    - There is exactly nothing you can do so you should learn to take it and like it.

In other cases, the GPL has been shown to be decently effective.

And the Free Software Foundation (FSF) - https://www.fsf.org/

I doubt it's going to happen, but if the author(s) of stolen open source code file a lawsuit, they may force the matter through the courts.

A copyright holder publishing code under the GPLv3 has the ability to revoke permissions to violators. If, say Linus Torvalds or another (big) author of Linux kernel code forces the issue, Xiaomi would perform IP violations every time they try to sell a device running Linux.

If this happen, Xiaomi be given a chance to correct the situation at the very least, before revoking becomes possible. If they still don't comply, kernel contributors may use such court cases to get governments to take action. IP theft has led to phones being barred from sale before, and that was because of vague things like "rounded corners".

It'll take years of legal fees, but it's possible to hit them where it hurts: denying them access to the lucrative western markets.

Defending a license takes money.

The ability to earn money is limited by open source licensing.

Open source licensing is largely self defeating --- as proven by the case in point.

Oh, I assure you Chinese companies very much believe in IP, at least their own - use some of theirs without permission and watch how their “don't believe” attitude sticks around. There are IP violation cases between Chinese companies, it just isn't practical for most non-Chinese concerns to try enforce anything from the outside.

What we see in China these days is very similar to the US back in Dickens' time, when copying literature like his works was rampant in the US and there was very little people from outside the US could do about it. The US only started to care about international IP regulation once they had enough to defend for it to be worth playing ball. Currently, China's companies and government have more to gain from not caring than they do from playing nice.

I'm no fan of the IP insanity, but in this situation, I can only see hypocrisy.

That's definitely true, but it's not really in a "let's take it more a lenient way" kind, because otherwise Xiaomi would have published those kernel sources

I'd phrase this as "In most cultures, you have no real, legal way of getting back at others taking your intellectual property". They absolutely do recognize, value, and try to protect their own intellectual property. Not believing in it would mean that things are public domain mostly, which is absolutely not the case.

Meanwhile yes, western IP laws have a lot of bullshit going on.

That could use some elaboration on what you mean by "believe".

There are over 180 countries that are members of the Berne Convention and nearly as many in TRIPS, which suggests some level of belief in Western style IP in a majority of the world.

I mean looking at the strings in Huawei's switch firmware revealed Cisco copyright notices. They were too lazy (or didn't understand) how to remove them! [0]

> My current phone is a Xiaomi, looks like my next one won't be (it may not have been anyway, due to a list of minor irritations & larger red flags like impossible to uninstall apps and a default clock app that demands full contacts access in order to be able to set an alarm, but this is definitely another point against).

Wait until you check you network logs!

[0] https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...

Xiaomi at least still allow bootloader unlocks for phones and other devices whereas others including western companies do not.

On a scale of 1 to China, what level of IP infringement, technology theft, and corporate espionage are Xiaomi operating at?

China.

This is absolutely a solvable problem and a winnable war without the "money to take on a behemoth in court". And in fact the war was won, long ago[2]. In the west.

The difference is the idea of "rule of law", certainly not a cynical take on resourcing.

[1] In fact it's more common to see companies irrationally afraid of the consequences of a license violation than ones trying to evade enforcement.

[2] Edit, because two replies have wanted to pick on the fact that violations still occur occasionally to try to invalidate the point. Open source software licenses in the modern US and Europe are overwhelmingly honored in commercial software. Period. Yes, companies mess up. But claiming somehow that everywhere-is-as-bad-as-china-and-this-cannot-work is ridiculous. Please stop, that kind of argument is hurting the discourse.

FSF lost interest in GPL enforcement years ago.

Conservancy is the only org doing GPL enforcement in the public interest, and they only have enough funding to do about one lawsuit at a time.

But I hate Unihertz for other reason. You can pretty much buy their hardware exclusively on their website which is a horrible e-merchant: Their delivery failed (maybe they never sent it, maybe they sent it with the cheapest post service possible, i don't know), and well pretty much they stole money from me. That was a "kickstarter" [1], so I couldn't ask my credit card for a refund.

And that's after I was already a sold customer since I already ordered one before, AND I gave them visibility by having custom ROM support for their devices.

[1] the quotes are here because the device was Google-certified months before, so clearly the product didn't need a "kickstart", they hide behind it to steal from users