Free Software Foundation Files Suit Against Cisco

This is incredible news. The behemoth Cisco has apparently not been in compliance with the GPL License (in relation to their Linksys routers for one), and one problem after another seems to have been cropping up as the Free Software Foundation (FSF) tried to resolve each one.

Finally, the FSF saw no recourse but to finally file a lawsuit to get them to resolve all of the issues and released a press release to that effect. The FSF gives more details in this article. The complaint filed by the Software Freedom Law Center (who announced the filing on their on site) on behalf of the FSF is also available.

The news is spreading far and wide: already, there are articles in InformationWeek, InternetNews, and NetworkWorld. It’s also already on Slashdot, and a Wikipedia page is aging nicely already. (Side note: it’ll be interesting to see how gnu.org handles the slashdot effect…. but I digress.)

I can’t wait until the folks at Groklaw get their hands on this; will be interesting (and will update with the results when it happens).

Lastly, if you believe in what the FSF has been doing, why not join today?

The Asus EeePC: GPL Violator?

It appears from this article by ITWire that the Asus EeePC may be in violation of the GPL.  The GPL is the copyright that covers the Linux kernel and specifies the rights and responsibilities given to the receiver of the copyrighted product (the kernel in this case).

Turns out that Asus has utilized the kernel with some modifications but has not released any of the source code – a direct violation of the GPL.  And with the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) filing new lawsuits on behalf of busybox (another GPL-licensed product) after resolving the last one to the benefit of busybox, I can’t help but imagine that Asus will tread carefully and will negotiate.  We’ll see.