OStatic

In December, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) filed suit against Cisco, after several years of urging the company to comply with the licensing terms used on its Linksys routers. Several Linksys routers used firmware licensed under the GPL/LGPL, but Cisco failed to make the source code available per the terms of the licenses.

It's not terribly easy to make the FSF resort to legal action, but after five years of relative unresponsiveness, FSF licensing compliance engineer Brett Smith said the organization had to take stronger measures to get the problem resolved.

The case against Cisco has been settled, with Cisco agreeing to appoint a Free Software Director who will ensure Linksys complies with the terms of the free licenses it uses, and report back to the FSF on its progress.

For most people, the most important part of a software license is the end. That's because they're totally uninterested in the license itself; they are merely interested in scrolling past it, so that they can click on OK and install the software that they are running. For users of open-source software, however, licenses should be extremely important, because they determine what you may and may not do with a particular program. Open-source developers have long debated the merits of the GNU General Public License vs. the BSD License. As open-source software becomes mainstream, and is integrated into larger systems, these age-old arguments are less theoretical than ever, and should be understood not only by developers, but also by managers and executives of organizations working with open source. Van Lindberg's new book is an excellent place to start.