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FSF settles with Cisco
[This press release is available on the web at <http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-05-cisco-settlement.html>. FSF Compliance Engineer Brett Smith has written about what we can learn from this settlement at <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/2009-05-settlement>.] BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Wednesday, May 20, 2009 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Cisco Systems, Inc. are pleased to announce that they have reached a joint agreement. Under the agreement, the FSF has agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against Cisco. Cisco has agreed to appoint a Free Software Director for Linksys, a subsidiary of Cisco, to supervise Linksys' compliance with the requirements of free software licenses such as the GPL (the GNU General Public License). The Free Software Director will report periodically to the FSF regarding Linksys' compliance efforts. Cisco has further agreed to take certain steps to notify previous recipients of Linksys products containing FSF programs of their rights under the GPL and other applicable licenses, to publish a licensing notice on the Linksys website, and to provide additional notices in a separate publication. In addition, Cisco will continue to make the complete and corresponding source code for versions of FSF programs used with current Linksys products freely available on its website. Cisco will also make a monetary contribution to the FSF. The parties recognize Cisco's ongoing obligations under the GPL and other free software licenses. The FSF will continue to independently monitor Linksys' compliance with these licenses, and work with Linksys to resolve any new issues that may arise. "We are glad that Cisco has affirmed its commitment to the free software community by implementing additional measures within its compliance program and dedicating appropriate resources to them, further reassuring the users' freedoms under the GPL," said Peter Brown, Executive Director of the FSF. "Our agreement results in making all of the relevant source code available in the fastest way possible." ### About the FSF The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at <http://donate.fsf.org>. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA. ### Media Contacts Brett Smith Licensing Compliance Engineer Free Software Foundation +1 (617) 542 5942 x18 <brett@fsf.org> ### _______________________________________________ FSF And GNU Press mailing list <info-press@gnu.org> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-press (Log in to post comments)
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 19:10 UTC (Wed) by pranith (subscriber, #53092) [Link]
thats the way to go!! Sue the hell out of companies which use your products. Make them donate to your foundation, scare them away to use alternative(free and non GPL(read BSD)) programs. If this is the way you deal with users, the business community has been right all being wary of using FREE software.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 19:26 UTC (Wed) by vondo (guest, #256) [Link]
Oh, please. Go away troll.
If they'd followed the rules to begin with, they would not have to do any of this. If they'd mis-used code from someone else, they'd probably be forced to give up several times the profits they made on the product.
If you use free software, follow the &#$*! rules. It's that simple. If you don't and someone points out that you aren't, get into compliance quickly and the "penalties" will be smaller.
If you don't like it, write your own !@#%&@ code, use BSD code, or pay a license fee to someone to use their code.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 20:05 UTC (Wed) by pranith (subscriber, #53092) [Link]
That is exactly what is happening. People are using other software. Google is not touching any GPL licensed software(other than the kernel) for their userland. This is a huge loss to the community which could have greatly benefited by Google's own contribution. Alas...
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 20:12 UTC (Wed) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]
If a company (mis)using GPL'd software already isn't contributing back (if they were, they'd be compliant with the GPL) how is scaring them off by enforcing the GPL going to cause them to contribute any less?
Companies not using GPL'd software is only a loss to the community if those companies would have followed the license; that they choose a different license suggests they weren't willing to in the first place. An un-enforced GPL license might just as well be BSD.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 21, 2009 14:54 UTC (Thu) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]
"Companies not using GPL'd software is only a loss to the community if those companies would have followed the license"
I would put forth that, due to network effects, this is not quite true.
Sort of like how people say MS benefits from the extra large user base from non-legit users. (Mind share and etc.)
In the case of GPL software, the loss may be worth it as the other option would result in an ineffectual GPL. (Do you get what I am driving at?)
all the best,
drew
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 21, 2009 22:02 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
If a company doesn't use GPL, because it would be forced to give away everything immediately, the
original project won't get anything back. The BSD case is different - the original may get a code back, just not immediately and not all of it. So, it's actually better for both the project and the closed source derivatives.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 20:54 UTC (Wed) by Simetrical (guest, #53439) [Link]
"Google is not touching any GPL licensed software(other than the kernel) for their userland."
Source for that? Google presumably uses GNU userspace for their systems, in addition to just the Linux kernel. They also definitely use MySQL for some things.
LGPL and comparable licenses have the same source-code provision requirements as came up in this legal case, so it's fair to include those with the GPL in this context. Google funds Firefox, which is (L)GPL (plus MPL, which is similar to the LGPL). Parts of Chromium are LGPL, since parts of WebKit are.
I can't think of too much more, but then, almost all of Google's software is developed in-house. They seem to favor BSD-style licenses for software *they* write and then open-source, but I haven't seen any evidence of their going very far out of their way to avoid (L)GPL-style licenses for software they use.
I wouldn't view it as a big loss, though. If anyone wants to avoid using the GPL, it's probably because they don't want to contribute their changes back. In that case, no loss to anyone else. Actual liability for GPL violations is *very* uncommon. Notice how in this case, it only happened when Cisco continually disregarded the license terms over the course of *years*.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 21:01 UTC (Wed) by pranith (subscriber, #53092) [Link]
I meant in the case of Android. Google is explicitly using BSD userland to avoid licensing issues. I have nothing against people enforcing GPL. Just the way they ensure it is hard to digest. Suing should actually be a last resort. Not the first.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 21:12 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]
Google is using a BSD based userland for Android because some of its phone
partners weren't comfortable having to give back sources for programs built on it. As others have mentioned, if they aren't interested in returning source modifications, they might as well be using BSD code anyway, so no, that's not a great loss to the community, since they'd not be returning the code in any case.
Duncan
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 21:17 UTC (Wed) by pranith (subscriber, #53092) [Link]
They might have considered giving back if Android could succeed using a GPL userland. And I think Android could have been popular using GPL userland given the fact that Google was pushing Android. Mind you, hardware manufacturers cannot simply ignore a reasonably successful OS.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 21:27 UTC (Wed) by Auders (subscriber, #53318) [Link] As I understand it, suing was quite close to being the last resort. As explained in the initial announcement the FSF have been working with Cisco to make them comply with the GPL since 2003. Only when it became clear that talking wouldn't make them comply did they file the suit.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 23:00 UTC (Wed) by deunan_knute (subscriber, #290) [Link]
> Suing should actually be a last resort. Not the first.
perhaps you should read up on the issue before commenting:
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/2008-12-cisco-complaint
the FSF has been playing cat-and-mouse with Linksys/Cisco since 2003...
FSF settles with Cisco Posted Jun 29, 2009 0:28 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
I would suspect the use of BSD code in Android is because they want to play safe in the new telecom area, and give carriers the ability to lock down devices arbitrarily. In short, tivo-ization. That means the GPL works as intended. What does it matter if the code was free when you can't touch it anymore?
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 21:01 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
To be fair, GPLd code has had a lot more business success than BSD. In fact, GPL has had a lot (GNU, everything Linux etc) and BSD not much at all (a little FreeBSD, mostly Apache) and all the latter mostly as non-free extended variants. The tit-for-tat principle makes a lot of business sense, you don't want your competitor to take your code without giving back.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 21:20 UTC (Wed) by pranith (subscriber, #53092) [Link]
> you don't want your competitor to take your code without giving back
Use BSD license and make the code proprietary. This is exactly where BSD is more business friendly than GPL. GPL is end-user friendly, BSD developer friendly..
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 21:56 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]
"This is exactly where BSD is more business friendly than GPL. GPL is end-user friendly, BSD developer friendly.."
BSD is proprietary developer friendly, but it is certainly not a slam dump case for being more "free software developer" friendly. In some cases, sure (mixing with other free software), but I would guess that in some cases the GPL has been much more "free software developer" friendly.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 21, 2009 16:40 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
The BSD license is only friendlier for companies that don't want to contribute anything back.
With the GPL license you have lots of companies that actually contribute back and use the fact that it's open source and it will stay open source to be competitive. They are unable or not willing to produce the entire software stack on their own so they are able be competitive by working with the 'community'.
With the BSD license that is much harder because as soon as you contribute code back to the original product a competitor of yours can take your work, improve it, then sell it closed source.
This puts you in a competitive disadvantage since both companies have X amount of dollars to spend on development. You spend X, then they take it, spend X then keep it closed source. So your competitor is getting X^2 development benefits for every X amount you spend.
So, in fact, the GPL is VERY business friendly.
And it shows. Despite all the horseshit about BSD being more business-friendly it is in fact Linux-based or Linux-oriented companies are the ones that tend to be much much more commercially oriented.
IBM, Redhat, Novell, Intel, MySQL, etc etc. These are all large and very commercially oriented companies that either contribute heavily to GPL'd software, efforts that cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, for the very specific purpose of commercially exploiting GPL software.
So the BSD rhetoric doesn't play out that well.
Sure sure there are companies like Microsoft or whoever else is happy to suck in huge amounts of BSD code for various products, but the BSD folks won't see a dime, a patch, or any credit, from the vast majority of companies that use it... so progress will always be slow.
Which is fine if that is what the BSD folks want. Different licenses for different purposes and focuses.
Personally I like having a competitive modern operating system to use on my desktop and servers, so I am very happy about the GPL.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 21, 2009 22:06 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
You actually got it completely backwards. ;-)
For a company that doesn't want to give anything back, there is no difference between GPL and BSD
For a company that attempts to invest a significant amount of development, GPL is much worse
With BSD, it's not the case. If you develop something large, you can keep your changes for yourself
Your idea was tested... and it failed Posted May 22, 2009 6:32 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] So, when you develop something that is derived from GPL, your competitors will take all your changes for free and then sell the same product cheaper, because it was you who paid for all this. Sorry, but this is the same flaved argument nVidia is pushing - and it was proved again and again that it's bogus. By the time competitors are getting access to your code it's already to late: your product is on sale and theirs is not. But the "lost productiovity" with BSD is much worse threat. Read this. Yes, it's true that FreeBSD and NetBSD have good kernels today - years after Linux. And they head-start! BSD was mature OS when Linux was a joke! What does it mean for business? Not only must you write your top-sikrit proprietary part, you must spend enormous amount of money to play catch-up with GPLed offers! Not a good business investment at all.
Your idea was tested... and it failed Posted May 22, 2009 9:24 UTC (Fri) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Yes, "my idea" was tested - and it was proven to be true, as demonstrated by Apple, Juniper or
Netapp. You don't have this kind of products based on Linux - simply because if something takes years to develop, it doesn't matter that your competitors will start to sell it three months later than you.
As for speed of development - the reason for this is very simple: marketing. Linux was - and still is
Ah, the glory of things long gone Posted May 22, 2009 11:25 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] You don't have this kind of products based on Linux - simply because if something takes years to develop, it doesn't matter that your competitors will start to sell it three months later than you. Sorry, but no. We don't see these kind of products based on Linux because it takes decade or so to create polished product. When Apple's, Juniper's or Netapp's current offers were developed Linux was a toy system. Today Linux is more capable - and today Juniper and Netapp are playing with Linux because it makes no sense to continue with *BSD - but before they'll drop old *BSD-based systems they need to have replacements for them so *BSD-based stuff is not going away overnight. Apple is too tied to current platfrom to easily switch sides. Linux was - and still is - all about guerilla marketing and making much noise about minor implementation details. BSD focused on technical stuff instead. That's why you don't hear much about BSD, even in areas where it's technically ahead of Linux. Sorry, but it's just not true anymore. Was not true for many years in fact. When BSD were ahead they often trumped their advantage and were quite vocal - today the only reason to use *BSD is legacy: if you have products and personell trained for *BSD - it's probably Ok to continue to use it. But new projects? Linux with very few exceptions. Yes, it's true that there exist small niches where *BSD still have advantage over Linux - but it becomes harder and harder to find them. And so even companies pretty dedicated to *BSD for years (aforementioned Juniper and Netapps) are starting to toy with Linux. We see reinnasance of BSD licensing in the compilers space (rise of LLVM) but it remains to be seen how good this retailation will be - and all other free non-GPL compilers are history (or sideshow at best) today.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 21:11 UTC (Wed) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
"That is exactly what is happening. People are using other software."
Cool. If they want to use BSD software they will just have to deal with the slower development due to everyone forking off their own private changes.
Yet another troll? Posted May 22, 2009 6:17 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Google is not touching any GPL licensed software(other than the kernel) for their userland. This claim is FUD. Plain and simple. Google uses GPLed software, returns patches back to community and has only slight preference for other licenses. MySQL, Binutils, GCC, WebKit, WINE - these things are all GPLed and they all got contributions from Google. What other non-GPLed project got more patches? True, Google is trying to avoid GPL for its own releases, but as far es existing software goes GPL is fine. The license banned by Google is AGPL and this is not result of political stance but simple fact that it greatly increases management burden: if you have thousands of servers and complex roll-out procedures (and Google obviously have both) then "simple" requirement to give exact "corresponding code" on demand becomes a nightmare.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 19:29 UTC (Wed) by jeff_marshall (subscriber, #49255) [Link]
The FSF is not a troll. Cisco got sued because they (via subsidiary linksys) violated the terms of the license which granted them the ability to make copies of software whose copyright was owned by the FSF.
The business community should be wary of distributing any software whose license terms they do not understand. Some programs (e.g., AT&T's graphviz) include indemnification clauses that can make acquisition of your company by another company difficult if you're bound by them.
This is really just sloppy on the part of Cisco. It's not difficult to comply with the terms of the GPL, and I think its probably more profitable for Cisco to comply than to abandon FSF owned GPL licensed software (or GPL software in general) in favor of either buying equivalent software or writing new software from scratch.
-Jeff
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 19:31 UTC (Wed) by rknasc (guest, #11401) [Link]
It looks to me that they were a whole lot nicer than the BSA has been with people even suspected of not touching all of the bases on a MicroSoft license.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 20, 2009 20:59 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]
> Sue the hell out of companies which use your products. [...] If this is the way you deal with users,...
Funny how people infriging commercial software licences are called "pirates", while huge companies infriging the GPL are called "users".
> scare them away to use alternative(free and non GPL(read BSD))
Both GPL and BSD licences basically share the same long-term goal of growth, but using extremely different approaches. Only the future will tell which is the most efficient growth strategy. Very lucky You, enlightened enough to know which approach will eventually prove the best.
Also consider that some developers might be interested in not just growth.
If you believe in freedom, surely you can accept difference.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 22, 2009 9:49 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] thats the way to go!! Sue the hell out of companies which use your products. Make them donate to your foundation, scare them away to use alternative(free and non GPL(read BSD)) programs. If this is the way you deal with users, the business community has been right all being wary of using FREE software. These remarks are so ill-considered that one wonders whether the "troll" label doesn't fit after all. As others have pointed out, if you use any software which isn't public domain then you have to honour the licence offered to you: you cannot just take the code and then claim that you got it for free (gratis) and so cannot be held to anything, or any other excuse rolled out by the average copyright infringement perpetrator. Indeed, it's the same with permissively-licensed code, too: try distributing stuff without the copyright and permissions statements, and you might get your day in court as well. The FSF doesn't care whether their licences make Free Software popular: that's not the idea behind Free Software. And as drag pointed out, you can claim that some flavour of permissive licence is (gag!) "business-friendly" if you like, but if you aren't a big company with enough developers on hand to outrun the original project on further development (and if you are, what do you need Free Software for, exactly?), you end up with a proprietary fork that just decays with lack of maintenance and with no route back to the mainline. Free Software isn't some kind of cheerleading exercise where the aim is to get as many points as possible by getting code out there for use by as many people as possible, where every distributor will weld the lid shut and give the end-user such an experience that, as a vendor, they might as well have used Windows CE for all the benefits of Free Software conferred on the end-user. When a division of Cisco - a corporation of significant size - repeatedly failed to comply with the terms of a copyright licence, the party at fault is precisely Cisco with their apparently cavalier attitude to such matters. Indeed, the FSF have done them a favour: other parties would gladly take the opportunity to "sue the hell" out of them. That you write "this is the way you deal with users" says a great deal about your perspective, where Cisco is apparently the all-important user, and everyone buying Cisco's products are just bottoms on seats. I suggest you acquaint yourself with wider notions of freedom before lecturing people with vastly more experience of such matters.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 21, 2009 5:04 UTC (Thu) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]
What is meant under the term "FSF programs" ? If I understand correctly, not every GPL-licensed program is an FSF program. Like, for example, Linux. Its is GPL but not FSF. It has its own LF.
FSF settles with Cisco Posted May 21, 2009 6:47 UTC (Thu) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] You've got it, lots of software not written by the Free Software Foundation uses the General Public License. The GPL was written by the FSF, but they make the GPL freely available as boiler-plate text for other parties to use for their software too. The reason the lawsuit with Cisco is about FSF programs is that the FSF doesn't have legal standing to sue over a copyright infringement in works for which the FSF doesn't hold a copyright. This isn't peculiar to the FSF -- you can't sue Joe Blogg's for his not meeting the terms of the GPL when distributing Velothobber2000 -- only the holder of the copyrights for Velothobeer2000 has the legal standing to sue Joe Bloggs for not meeting the terms of the Velothobber2000 copyright license. In practice, by requiring compliance to the copyright license for FSF-copyrighted software, compliance also occurs for other GPLed software within the distributed product. Partly that's due to practicality (it's easier to publish all the source code, rather than just the FSF code); partly that's the result of upper management (who've didn't know what the GPL was until their lawyers told them) instructing their staff that they don't wish for a second GPL-enforcement lawsuit. This FSF-Cisco lawsuit is a tad unusual, mainly due to the patience with which the FSF have treated the lack of performance of Cisco/Linksys in meeting negotiated compliance actions. Probably anyone else would have bought the GPL hammer down and cancelled Cisco's license to distribute the software. That's something to consider the next time you read that the FSF or GPL is anti-business.
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