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

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[jalet]

Ouch ! This hurts !!!

Thanks for the laugh, then.

Re:Hypocrisy in action

[DaveV1.0]

It is not a troll, it is the truth. You don't like it because you know it is true.

Re:This is why copyright laws are bad

[jellomizer]

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.

How is it absurd to purchase Microsoft's work and sell it for profit. People do it all the time. That is the point of licensing software from a company. Apple did it they licensed Microsoft Exchanges protocol to incorporate it into the iPhone. No you probably wont get away with making your version of windows with just a recompile... (However similar things have been done in the past).

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.

Yes but the terms are usually quite clear. You buy it do what you want with it. With the GNU there are these hooks Sure you can use it but you need to release your source as well. This is where the problem is and the main confusion by Cisco. They may have made a mistake and Put GPL Code with their code. Now there is the problem of what happens if you can't release your code as GPL. Breaking other peoples contracts in the process. Even if you go back and Get rid of the GPL there will still be systems with the GPL still running.

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)

Well my main point was to show that aggressive attempts to push full GPL compliance (even if it was in the FSF rights to do so) has consequences. FSF has this paranoid view of Corporations and when they treat them as evil companies the companies will be naturally defensive. If FSF wins then a company on the defensive will not take a financial hit but pass the cost to the consumers. (Ok fine you got what you want now you all have to pay for it)