FSF Files Suit Against Cisco For GPL Violations

Brett Smith writes "This morning the Free Software Foundation filed suit against Cisco for violations of the GPL and LGPL. There's a blog post with background about the case. The full complaint is available too." The short version, as excerpted by reader byolinux, is that "in the course of distributing various products under the Linksys brand Cisco has violated the licenses of many programs on which the FSF holds copyright, including GCC, binutils, and the GNU C Library. In doing so, Cisco has denied its users their right to share and modify the software."

Comments

This is why copyright laws are bad

[Throtex]

They allow abusive entities such as the Free Software Foundation to go after Cisco. If only the software was distributed without cumbersome GLP and LGPL licensing restrictions, and was truly free like software wants to be, then Cisco wouldn't have been forced to violate the licenses.

For shame.

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[jalet]

Are you joking ?

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[mrsteveman1]

Dammit, if you had kept that going longer than 3 minutes i would have had some entertainment for the afternoon

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[calmofthestorm]

I agree, copyright law is stifling innovation by preventing large American corporations from using the work of small, independent inventors without contributing in kind. Clearly there should be a fee to copyright works, to ensure that only properly-licensed corporations, using licensed, trusted compilers, can produce them.

I'm Ted Stevens, convicted felon, and I approved this message*!

* California v. Drew Disclaimer: No I'm not.

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[LtGordon]

Replied Cisco, "Curse you, Stallman!"

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Replied Cisco, "Curse you, Stallman!"

Actually, their exact words were, "Curse you, Stallman! We'd have gotten away with it, too; if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[Hal_Porter]

How "free" is your iPhone?

Free as in stolen.

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[jellomizer]

All the customers of their product will also need to pay an extra 25% of the cost because they need to add redoing the wheel software development. Before Linksys started to use the GNU tools Hubs even small ones were expensive. After Linksys incorporated GNU you can for relatively cheap get a Router, Switch and Firewall which is good enough for most people and small businesses. If you choose GNU as a developer you really forfeit a lot of your rights to your code. So if a big corporation takes your code and uses it on a loophole in the licence, you don't have much recourse.

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[mcgrew]

We woosh that the RIAA would offer music under the GPL!

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what she said!

Oh...uhhh, nevermind.

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[calmofthestorm]

I suppose you're right. It's especially important that Cisco use quality, trusted software developed in-house or offshore, rather than trusting the danger-fraught open source community. Even aside from patent violations and other blatant disregard of others' IP rights, and the far lower quality of code produced by enthusiastic volunteers as compared to paid, apathetic employees, can you really trust that these self-described "hackers" haven't put in backdoors for their Russian friends? There's just no way to know with open source, and given all this, and studies showing that open source has an astronomically higher total cost of ownership, this is probably the last straw.

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[hansamurai]

Stallman's beard?

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[dkleinsc]

That sounds like it ought to be an exclamation, along the lines of "Stallman's beard! I wasn't expecting that error."

Re:The thing about these lawsuits

[mrsteveman1]

You are an enabler, you enable people to avoid RTFA :D

The horror

[LtGordon]

You guys just don't get it. The FSF protects software. Then Cisco went and muddied it all up like your sister's proprietary, tattooed boyfriend. Now every time you use GCC, it'll be thinking of Cisco.

Re:The horror

[Hal_Porter]

Then Cisco went and muddied it all up like your sister's proprietary, tattooed boyfriend. Now every time you use GCC, it'll be thinking of Cisco.

Grunting from the next room disturbing your chain of thought, eh?

Re:The thing about these lawsuits

[hmar]

"You are an enabler, you enable people to avoid RTFA :D" For which we thank you

Re:"Oh Jeez, not this shit again!"

[19thNervousBreakdown]

That's what scrollbars are for. Thank God they're under the GPL license, or I might not be able to scroll past this tired old discussion.

Re:Maybe this wasn't intentional.

[Tetsujin]

There's a lot of posts accusing of Cisco of intentionally violating the GPL; even an alleged ex-employee saying that Cisco "didn't care".

It could be a misunderstanding of the GPL or bad advice from an expert. Why, if I asked a question about the GPL, I would get dozens of posts each having their own and differing "expert" opinion of what is meant.

...Generally prefixed with "IANAL"...

Well, Cisco has to consult some people who do not anal... Those people should have a much less ambiguous view of the GPL.

Re:The thing about these lawsuits

[BlargIAmDead]

(3) That the Court order Defendant to account for and disgorge to Plaintiff all profits derived by Defendant from its unlawful acts; [...]

So am I the only one who thinks disgorge is an awesomely awkward word. All I can see is something like "2 Routers 1 Port!"

Re:"Oh Jeez, not this shit again!"

[Culture20]

We reenact this important drama annually, lest we forget.

Get the name right

[SnarfQuest]

Get the name right. It's Gnu/Cisco.

hitler was evil

[emmons]

Hitler is evil. Microsoft is evil. Microsoft uses software licenses. That makes software licenses tools of evil.

Therefore software licenses are tools of Hitler and must be destroyed!

There.. can we be done with this now?