The linked press kit says:

> not only do multiple copies of the Linux kernel appear in the firmware, other GPL’d and LGPL’d programs were found, including U-Boot, bash, gawk, tar, glibc, and ffmpeg.

The copyright for bash, gawk, tar, and glibc is owned by the Free Software Foundation. The FSF requires copyright assignment on contributions specifically so that they can enforce the GPL. So, if the FSF is unwilling to participate in the case, then that would say something very bad about the state of the FSF (or the state of their relationship with Conservancy--perhaps the FSF would prefer to mount their own case separately?). However, I don't believe that to be the case.

It is my understanding that Conservancy holds the copyright on parts of the Linux kernel, and is authorized to represent several other copyright holders of the kernel. They should be able to enforce the GPL for the kernel without getting anyone else involved.

So to me, this reads as Conservancy intentionally avoiding involving the copyright holders and going for a different strategy, in order to establish precedent and strengthen the GPL. And if that fails, then they could presumably fall back to filing a second lawsuit from the traditional copyright holder perspective. But I would have liked to see this called out and explained explicitly in the press materials, because I'm having to read between the lines here.

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/

Oh, I may have misunderstood you there, apologies if so. Conservancy can handle compliance and enforcement activities on behalf of more than a dozen Linux copyright holders, but I don't actually know if they hold the copyrights. Sorry if I misunderstood.

According to the page you linked, they do:

> In addition, some developers have directly assigned their copyrights on Linux to Conservancy, so Conservancy also enforces the GPL on Linux via its own copyrights in Linux.