Intellectual Property Law

Open Source: One to Watch FSF v. Cisco

By Tim Feathers

The Free Software Foundation has sued Cisco alleging that Cisco breached the GNU GPL by distributing routers with GPL Open Source software without providing end users of its products with access to the source codefor open source software embedded within the products, as required by the GPL.The FSF noted that it had not gone to court in over 15 years, but that despite actively working with Cisco to remedy the non-compliance, it had no alternative but to force Cisco's hand. Specifically the FSF said:

Most of these programs are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and the rest are under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Both these licenses encourage everyone, including companies like Cisco, to modify the software as they see fit and then share it with others, under certain conditions. One of those conditions says that anyone who redistributes the software must also provide their recipients with the source code to that program. The FSF has documented many instances where Cisco has distributed licensed software but failed to provide its customers with the corresponding source code.

The Open Source community has been faring well in recent court battles, so it will be interesting to see whether Cisco quickly capitulates with a settlement, or if we have some more Open Source law made with this case.

Related:  Federal Circuit Validates Open Source Licensing Model

Full post as published by The TechKnowledgy Blog on December 12, 2008 (boomark / email).