Comment by indymike
14 hours ago
> If you did not receive such a written offer, the GPL, in itself, makes no guarantee that you have the right to the source code
Wrong. The requirement to provide source code under the GPL is primarily governed by Section 3 of the GNU General Public License v2 and Section 1 of the GNU General Public License v3. The whole point of the the GPL is to make it so users of software could get source code to the software.
Section 3 of GPL 2 states that the company must either give the source to the user alongside the product (in which case the user has the source already), or the company must give to the user a written offer of source code. Note that if the second option is taken, the company is not obligated by the GPL itself to give the source code to the user. It is then only the written offer which obligates the company to give the source code to the user; only the written offer gives the user the right to the source code. Not the GPL itself.