Cisco isn't malicious -- just organizationally-challenged

Sorry, Rich, but you're wrong. Cisco's inability to get its arms around licensing IN GENERAL is flawed and that's what they are working to remedy. Microsoft CE, Linux, gcc -- pick your poison; if Cisco doesn't know it's being used in a product, they cannot comply with the license. My point is that what's fundamentally "broken" here is Cisco's processes that allow this to occur, not their corporate ethical stand. I'd guess with some confidence that there is a team of folks DEDICATED to fixing to this problem so it doesn't happen again, but when you're fixing an organization and a culture, it's more difficult than just adding another step to a process.

Cisco has been down this same path (serially, in some cases) with commercial vendors as well. Always quick to remedy, Cisco isn't trying to steal anything from them either and always pays (and sometimes pays contractual penalties as well).

I don't think you understand how licensing typically works w/ big companies that have LOTS of products, global presence, and few controls. Software in most of these companies is described as an "image" or a "load" and rarely contains a "Bill of Materials" that describes everything in that image. Lacking that Bill of Materials, how can a manufacturing group (which is separate and distinct from the group that built the software) enforce compliance by shipping the code? Thus my point on this being organizational in nature.

Sure, the basic commercial licensing model still holds: $BIG_COMPANY decides to build a product, they decide what components they are going to use/license, they contact those vendors and negotiate a deal for including their software in the product, and some money changes hands. The problem is different for "freely-downloadable" software--most engineers are NOT familiar with open source licenses and aren't aware what they are (or potentially are) obligating their company to when downloading the software. This is a shift in the problem from your Microsoft CE use-case, since you can't just go out and download Microsoft CE and embed it in your product...you need license keys, etc.

In many ways, ease of access to the code is the weak link in the chain for Cisco and other values of $BIG_COMPANY.

And to be clear, I'm not saying that Cisco isn't on the hook for compliance here, I'm simply making the point that non-compliance is not done with intent or malice. Doesn't make it right and Cisco SHOULD improve its processes (and I'd bet that this suit will be the catalyst for that exact response), but Cisco shouldn't earn the wrath of the Slashdot fan-boys for this. There are too many other valid reasons for Cisco to earn their wrath...