Push Comes to Shove Comes to Whack-A-Mole: FSF Suit Against Cisco

by Kristin Shoemaker - Dec. 11, 2008Comments (7)

On previous occasions it's been mentioned that it takes very specific behaviors for the Free Software Foundation to file suit against a company for violating the GNU GPL license.

Today, the FSF let Cisco Systems know in no uncertain terms that line had been crossed. The complaint centers on the Linksys brand routers, and the firmware used on those products.

Brett Smith, the licensing compliance engineer at the FSF said that in 2003, the FSF was notified that the Linksys WRT54G used GPL/LGPL licensed code in its firmware, but customers weren't getting the source code that these licenses required Cisco supply. He said that initially, Cisco seemed willing to work with the FSF to put procedures in place so that its products -- at the time, and in the future -- would comply with the license terms the firmware used.

Over the course of five years, a compliance plan never materialized. As the FSF investigated the Linksys WRT54G complaint, it was receiving license violation reports regarding other Cisco products. Smith says that new issues were being brought up before the older ones could be addressed, resulting in "...a five-years-running game of Whack-A-Mole."

Though the Linksys site does offer source code (according to the FSF, a somewhat more than cursory site search isn't turning up any results for me), the code is reportedly out of date or incomplete. Many Cisco customers report that formal written requests for source code (searching the Linksys site for source code did yield technical support contact information) frequently remain unaddressed.

FSF's complaint against Cisco was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York this morning by the Software Freedom Law Center (which will be representing the FSF in this case). A copy of the complaint (including a list of the code involved) is available in PDF format on the FSF website.


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7 Comments
 

Its about time...Tivo is another culprit that should be pursued for the same sorts of violations. It amazes me that companies like Cisco pretend like they're above the law and continue to violate the (FREE) licenses of the very products that are the foundation of some of their most profitable lines of business.


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Tivo has been compliant from the get go. As you can see from TFA, Cisco has been in violation for years now, and they just dragged their feet, while continuing to sell their crap.


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Tivo has been compliant from the get go. Cisco has been in violation (as cited in TFA too) for years now, and they brazenly continue to sell the Linksys box. Let's hope they more than make good, or pay a heavy price for assuming they can have their way.


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Cisco breached license not providing the source code.


Tivo has done annoying things like not allowing installing of your own binary replacements. Sorry GPL does not protect you from what Tivo has done.


Basically Tivo has not done violations of license so there are no violations to chase up. What Tivo do is annoying but legal.


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Just to clarify: Tvio uses the hardware locks to prevent users from installing their own software. They do provide the source code and they do (and always have) comply with GPL v2.


Their immoral (not illegal) hardware locks is the primary reason why the FSF upgraded the GPL to GPL v3. The FSF simply did not realize that the GPL could be (ab)used in this way until Tivo did it. What TIVO is doing is NOT allowed by GPL v3. New text in a new version of the GNU GPL does not apply to older versions, so TIVO can keep on using hardware locks - they just can not add any GPL v3 software.


What Cisco have been doing for the last few years is clearly in violation of the GNU GPL (any version of it) and that is completely different from what TIVO are doing. Cisco are in violation, TIVO uses a "loophole".


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Though the Linksys site does offer source code (according to the FSF, a somewhat more than cursory site search isn't turning up any results for me)


By typing "site:linksys.com open source download" into Google the first page that comes up is this page full of source code downloads. What kind of "more than cursory" site search did you do?


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(stepping down from high horse): I guess I should have checked if italics were supported before pasting that quote in my previous snarky comment....


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