The Free Software Foundation Cisco leads to court

http://www.zeusnews.it/index.php3?ar=stampa&cod=8910&numero=999

The Free Software Foundation Cisco leads to court

From five years Cisco not respect the GPL is refusing to release the source: the FSF was tired of waiting and decided to go to lawyers.

[ZEUS News - www.zeusnews.com - 13-12-2008]
Free Software Foundation accuses Cisco Gpl LGPL

In 2003, Cisco acquired Linksys and had its own brand for equipment intended for home networks and those of small companies.

Linksys produced - and still produces - router-based distributed software distributed under the license Gpl or or LGPL (in particular the model WRT54G and later), providing for the issuance of free source code. Thus, Cisco began working with the Free Software Foundation to complete compliance with the licensing, and everything seemed to go for the best.

Unfortunately, this tale has a happy ending: the process begun five years ago was never brought to completion and the FSF was tired of asking the issue of sources, so he decided to take legal action.

"In fifteen years we have never been in court," says Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF. "We always managed to take seriously the companies are working with their obligations. But take all legal actions necessary to ensure that our users have the rights that our licenses guarantee".

It is good to note that even in the face of many legal process to hide the code and keep close to the "intellectual property", there is someone who uses the law to achieve the exact opposite, as required by the license that Cisco has had his time accepted.