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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."
BSD and the like are more "free" for the developer / manufacturer while GPL is more "free" for the user / recipient of the software.
Which license that is more free depends on whose freedom one is concerned about.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
By the time this lawsuit has gotten though the legal system you will have forgotten why you bought the router and/or it will have died... proceed with the boycott
Cisco / Linksys set themselves up for a fall here. If they wanted code they could just rip off and use whilst largely ignoring the license, why on earth didn't they just use BSD code? These are large companies, presumably they have lawyers. But they're acting like some kid who downloads an image from Google Image Search and uses it on their webpage - "I downloaded it off the web for free so I can just use it right?"
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Wrong.
The BSD licence allows a developer to incorporate code into a proprietary project which may very well NOT be free (in any sense of the word) to use and which may well be under a licence (EULA) that very much covers use.
This is not to say that the BSD licence is flawed in any way, BTW: just that you're wrong and that the stated difference between the GPL and BSD licences is correct.
This is not exactly "put some code on the web for download."
If you mean that Linksys/Cisco could have avoided this at any time in the past five years by releasing the code, you are probably right. The FSF is easy to get along with. It is anybody's guess what they need to offer the FSF now to make it go away.
The way I see it, the free software community is just another company. We use each other's work, just like members of a company usually can, provided we agree on the ground rules. We work for communal benefit.
So let me ask you: If I get access to the windows source code via a contract (copyright) with Microsoft, should I be able to take Microsoft's work and sell it for personal profit? This is of course absurd. I see it as equally absurd that other companies should be able to take the open source community's work for free. They get the binaries and sources under a contract, they can follow it or their rights terminate.
A better example: Someone wrote a library that does something I want, and will license it to me for like $5 per copy for use in my software. Does this give me the right to take it for free (assuming I can) because I don't want to raise my product's prices to cover the increased cost? No. I can either accept their terms or not.
Of course I also don't buy all this omfg "free software good, bad software bad" crap. We're a company that works for its own interest, plain and simple. Just one that produces products far more to my liking, far more intuitive to my (granted, odd) mind, and far more useful in my line of work (CS research)
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
*sigh* Cueing the millionth identical replay of the exact same longwinded "BSD is freer because...." "No, GPL is freer because...." discussion subthread, in which the contributors get to restate the established position using the same old arguments to make the same old points, and neither side changes the other's mind.
:)
Nothing wrong with that, but we don't need to hear it over and over and over again. Can't we just find an old subthread on the subject and link to that instead?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
They can be forced to stop distributing their products, they can be sued for damages, but under no circumstance can they be forced to turn over code-- though that might be the easiest way to settle the lawsuit.
And also the easiest way to stay in business. If you wind up as a large scale GPL violator then the only sane option is likely to be releasing the code. If it's basically a choice between not distributing the code and going out of business or releasing the code and hoping it's all OK then a company can only really do the latter.
That's fine for hardware companies like Cisco and Nokia who mainly derive value from their hardware but I'm sure it'd kill a proprietary software company.
Nick
That's fine for hardware companies like Cisco [...] who mainly derive value from their hardware
I was more under the impression that Cisco's business model was more like a software company that happens to sell expensive hardware dongles.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
"Slashdotters" want the software to be freely distributed, freely used, and freely modified. Corporations use copyright to prevent that, so Slashdotters are against them. The FSF uses copyright to promote that, so Slashdotters support it. That's not hypocritical at all: in all cases Slashdotters are trying to work towards the same goal. You only thought it was hypocritical because you weren't looking at the whole issue.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Would it? How about compared to a similar scenario where they based their product on unlicensed proprietary software?
With the unlicensed GPL software they have one more option, so they're strictly less screwed than if it were unlicensed proprietary software.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
They allow abusive entities such as the Free Software Foundation to go after Cisco.
I know you're just trying to be funny, but what's worth noticing is that this is the FSF's first lawsuit:
[...] Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF. "In the fifteen years we've spent enforcing our licenses, we've never gone to court before. We have always managed to get the companies we have worked with to take their obligations seriously.
Isn't that interesting? I'm not sure whether Cisco decided to call the FSF's bluff or whether they have some other thinking behind their decisions; but I know that this is going to be interesting to watch.
IIRC, the GPL has been upheld in court before, so (depending on the details of Cisco's actions) the FSF is probably in a good position to win.
If FSF forces them into compliance without cisco feeling some pain or regret then i suspect they wont hesitate to repeat their deeds.
I understand FSF wants to be the good guys,they have principles and ethics, but Cisco is fighting from a different rulebook, one where the winner is the one with the most money, not the highest morals.
The only way Cisco and other similar companies will accept defeat is you beat them on their own turf, playing by their own rules. That means take their money, as much as you can get.