> Bricklink was purchased by LEGO relatively recently and had no say in its development. It is very likely a small team built it not even thinking about legalities.
1. being small doesn't exempt one from following the law.
2. if that is the case, someone at Lego didn't do their homework during the acquisition.
You ascribe a level of malice that is unwarranted.
1. No. But laws are rarely written in a way that people without a lawyer can understand.
Do you fully understand every EULA you agree to? Do you keep up with changes to the licenses of everything you use on a daily basis and immediately update your processes based on any changes you don't like? Do you have the expectation that everyone can do such a thing? Is there the expectation that everyone have a lawyer ready to review everything they touch?
2. They probably didn't. But Bricklink has such a footing, they likely thought it would be worth whatever hassles came up.
Lots of people didn't like the idea of Bricklink being bought by LEGO. Partly because it increases LEGO's control over the building block industry. Partly because it seemed to have come out of nowhere.
> But laws are rarely written in a way that people without a lawyer can understand.
The GPL has been around for decades (v1 is 34 years old), and it was written by a programmer. Unlike EULAs, it's a standard text that rarely ever changes (last time was almost 16 years ago). There are copious amounts of resources online, explaining in plain English what you can and cannot do with it, including all the grey areas.
GPL and LGPL are cultural cornerstones of the opensource community, so I honestly struggle to justify the ignorance, let alone defend it. Obviously shit happens (as I showed in another comment), but "we are a small team" is not an acceptable defence for abusing a license.
1. being small doesn't exempt one from following the law.
2. if that is the case, someone at Lego didn't do their homework during the acquisition.