Free Software Foundation Sues Cisco Over GPL

December 19, 2008 Computer News

Linksys has been the target of criticism from open source advocates that it was using GPL code in its routers but not making the source code for the proprietary system that resulted available to its customers, as required by the GPL. The FSF objection listed the GLIB c library, Coreutils C languge utilities, the Readline C code editor and Wget command for retrieveing HTML files, all FSF orginated software, as being used in the Linksys products.
Ciso took steps to bring itself into compliance with the GPL after purchasing Linksys. Free Software Foundation stated that is had already attempted to resolve outstanding issues through negotiations.
In previous appealed case, it was decided that the Artistic Licence, a less frequently used pen source license that the GP, was enforceable in the manner of a copyright license. A breach of a condition of the license amounted to a violation of copyright, and made the violator subject to”injunctive relief” as well as monetary damages.
If Cisco and FSF don’t reach an understanding, the substance of the GPL is going to be tested in a U.S. court for the first time. In previous case testings, GPL were filed on behalf of the authors of BusyBox, a set of Unix utilities issued under the GPL and utilized in a large variety of products.
In the a U.S. Court of Appeals it upheld the right for a software supplier to collect monetary damages under the provisions of the Artistic License. If the same understanding were applied to the GPL, it’s not known how a court would decode monetary damage for a product that is freely downloadable.