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FSF, OSI and Busybox

FSF, OSI and Busybox

Posted Dec 14, 2008 11:20 UTC (Sun) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
In reply to: FSF, OSI and Busybox by sbergman27
Parent article: The FSF raises the stakes for Cisco

The FSF does not list copyright on Busybox as being infringed in the complains, so the opinion of the Busybox maintainer is irrelevant.

to post comments

FSF, OSI and Busybox

Posted Dec 14, 2008 11:56 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (7 responses)

It is irrelevant to the present case, but not to the wider issue of copyright violations: Landley has some experience in the matter. Just as Harald Welte, who as kragil noted in the news item also knows a thing or two about violations), and he is quite more sympathetic to the lawsuit:
So the FSF's decision to take this problem to court is the most appropriate response that one can think of.
It is always interesting to know what knowledgeable people think about an issue, IMHO. That's why I wonder whether Landley's opinion is isolated (and maybe driven by his contract with Cisco).

FSF, OSI and Busybox

Posted Dec 14, 2008 13:48 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

I don't think it's driven by his contact with Cisco. I think it's driven
by his, to be frank, irrationally intense dislike of the FSF and all its
doings. Threatening his meal ticket was just an intensifier.

FSF, OSI and Busybox

Posted Dec 14, 2008 15:18 UTC (Sun) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link] (4 responses)

He also seems pretty pissed that they didn't tell him before filing. What?!

FSF, OSI and Busybox

Posted Dec 14, 2008 15:30 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

I can see two possibilities here, both completely bizarre:

- they didn't know Cisco was his employer, in which case there's no
reason for them to assume he'd care

- they did know Cisco was his employer, in which case they'd surely not
tell him and give his employer advance notice of a pending suit. (Before
the suit is filed, wouldn't this sort of thing violate attorney/client
confidentiality anyway? I'm not even a US resident let alone a lawyer but
it would seem seriously off to me.)

FSF, OSI and Busybox

Posted Dec 19, 2008 22:25 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (2 responses)

they'd surely not tell him and give his employer advance notice of a pending suit.

Why wouldn't they want Cisco to have advance notice of the lawsuit? I assume they told Cisco clearly multiple times that they intended to sue (hoping Cisco would respond by making it unnecessary).

Legal process isn't like war.

FSF, OSI and Busybox

Posted Jan 13, 2009 2:05 UTC (Tue) by darkonc (guest, #14197) [Link] (1 responses)

Once you pass the process off to the lawyers, a lot of analogies between war and the legal system hold true. You have a pretty-much no-holds-barred system there the point is to win 'at all costs'. You have exorbitant costs and commonly many innocent victims.

The list could go on....

> Legal process isn't like war.

FSF, OSI and Busybox

Posted Jan 13, 2009 4:31 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

You have a pretty-much no-holds-barred system there the point is to win 'at all costs'

The legal process I know isn't anything like that. First of all, most holds are barred. There are rules that fill books, and a referee always there to ensure only the most sportsmanlike holds are used. And in civil court, few litigants are interested in winning at all costs. In fact, most cases people would like to win don't even become lawsuits because the minimum cost of winning would exceed the payoff.

I don't think a surprise lawsuit is anything like a surprise attack anyway. Imagine a military attack where you suddenly inform the enemy that you're going to bomb him as soon as he's had time to prepare a thorough defense, including getting from you all the details of what kind of bomb you will drop and where. That's what a surprise lawsuit would be.

FSF, OSI and Busybox

Posted Dec 14, 2008 17:27 UTC (Sun) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

It is irrelevant to the present case, but not to the wider issue of copyright violations

The only thing I found somewhat relevant is the mention of Linksys as a model citizen on the BusyBox license page. All in all it very much sounds like a "Sue anyone except my friends" model, which is not uncommon I guess.

The rest of Landley's rambling is simply personal stuff that I found unpleasant and uninteresting to read.

relevance of Landley’s comments

Posted Dec 15, 2008 10:32 UTC (Mon) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link] (6 responses)

I think the primary relevance of the cited blog is not Landley’s relationship with Busybox but rather the issues he raises in the first 1–3 paragraphs of http://landley.net/notes.html#11-12-2008 (and the “last week” entry it references): that it is valuable to have large hardware procurers/suppliers like Cisco on one’s side (e.g. having free software driver support as one of their condition of procurement), and his impression as a Cisco insider that this suit jeapordizes Cisco’s steps in that direction: and hence that this “bull in a china shop” approach is a tactical error for FSF’s goals.

relevance of Landley’s comments

Posted Dec 15, 2008 12:55 UTC (Mon) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link] (5 responses)

his impression as a Cisco insider that this suit jeapordizes Cisco’s steps in that direction: and hence that this “bull in a china shop” approach is a tactical error for FSF’s goals.

Can anybody say with a clear conscience that the previous approach had worked to get cisco to get it's linksys division' house in order? clearly it hadn't since 5 years after cisco bought linksys, the linksys division of cisco was still fixing GPL compliance issues after product is released.

I'm going to make an entirely reasonable guess at what is going to happen. This will all blow over in month or two, cisco will keep it's linux plans on track (especially since the BSD's would be affected just the same , since they use some FSF GPL software) and that they will finally push their GPL compliance procedures at cisco out to their linksys subdivision.

relevance of Landley’s comments

Posted Dec 15, 2008 23:24 UTC (Mon) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link]

Neither I nor (I’d guess) Landley knows the details of the negotiations in the current case, but it’s very valuable to be aware of the damage and to consider how to minimize that damage.

relevance of Landley’s comments

Posted Dec 15, 2008 23:39 UTC (Mon) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link] (3 responses)

> Can anybody say with a clear conscience that the previous approach had
> worked to get cisco to get it's linksys division' house in order?

Yeah. Me.

relevance of Landley’s comments

Posted Dec 18, 2008 14:36 UTC (Thu) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link] (1 responses)

>> Can anybody say with a clear conscience that the previous approach had
>> worked to get cisco to get it's linksys division' house in order?

>Yeah. Me.
So why is linksys still causing the same problem with new products? have $$$ blinded you to the problem here? or have you just been bought heart and soul.

order

Posted Dec 18, 2008 23:53 UTC (Thu) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link]

There was no call for that last bit. Please refrain from such insulting and inflammatory insinuations on LWN.

Regarding the current case, he has already once in these comments replied to the charge of being influenced by money in his opinions on this matter, if you care to look.

I would ask you to refrain from such comments no matter who you're replying to, but I think you owe Rob Landley much more credit than you're giving.

relevance of Landley’s comments

Posted Jan 13, 2009 2:22 UTC (Tue) by darkonc (guest, #14197) [Link]

Could you provide some specifics on HOW being lenient with Cisco about their repeated violations of the GPL has resulted in their linksys group being diligent in ensuring that future products wouldn't violate GPL?

From my rather distant perch, it seems more like Cisco's simply been assuming that their GPL-friendliness (which has, incidently probably resulted in increased sales).. would give them a bye with result to their linksys-group violations.

It's actually two different issues with two different divisions of th company.

If the FSF's lenience has been truly productive, it would be good to know how..


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