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I read the German and I think I see where the screw-up is. I believe it is a mistranslation or misreading of the GPL by the German judge.

It seems to hinge on the last paragraph of section 3, where it says you are covered if you offer both the binaries and source from the same site. It makes sense, the source is right there so the offer is obviously implied.

But the judge interpreted it backwards and restrictively, saying 3.b) (the offer to give source) only works as a link in the case of the last paragraph, where they are both distributed from the same site. It is an insane reading of the GPL.

Even the FSF would disagree with this, as they've consistently been happy with companies making source code available online. Even the plaintiff, Harald Welte (owner of netfilter/iptables and others), has been happy with online postings when he sued other companies that were illegally distributing his work.

Note for the trolls: This guy started suing because he noticed his copyrighted works being illegally distributed without license by companies who were profiting from his work. Now he's mad and is going after any company found violating the license for his software and software by others who have assigned him fiduciary duty (one of those companies even used encryption to try to hide the illegal infringement).