TheOpenAnalyst » Free Software Foundation

Cisco Lawsuit: A Test for the GPL?

TheOpenAnalyst — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:40:00 +0000

The lawsuit between the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Cisco may be critical in shaping the future of the open source ecosystem, according to legal experts closely watching the saga’s next stages.

The FSF filed its legal complaint against Cisco last month, alleging that the networking giant violated the terms of the GPL, or General Public License.

Cisco Lawsuit: A Test for the GPL? |InternetNews

Protecode’s Mahshad Koohgoli on Software Intellectual Property and the Cisco Open Source Lawsuit

TheOpenAnalyst — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:28:00 +0000

Recently, the The Free Software Foundation (FSF), founded by MIT alum Richard Stallman, has filed a lawsuit against Cisco Systems for copyright infringement. The suit contends that Cisco distributed software originally written and distributed under the FSF’s General Public License (GLP), and has thus failed to fulfill the requirements of the GPL under which the software is published. The GLP terms oblige distributors to disclose that their products contain code licensed under the GPL and they must make that code available to any end user who requests to see it. As it happens, Linksys (now owned by Cisco) distributed various Linux-based products that rely on GPL-licensed components, but Linksys is said to have repeatedly failed to fulfill the GPL-specified obligations.

This is the first lawsuit that the FSF has ever filed for GPL infringement.

To explore the tangled matter of open source, intellectual property and the Cisco case, Your Truly just sat down and talked with Dr. Mahshad Koohgoli, CEO, of Protecode (www.protecode.com). Protecode has unique products that can examine a software developer’s project and automatically detect, log, identify and do pedigree-tagging of software content and report on associated intellectual property and licensing attributes and compliance against an organization’s policies, thus establishing intellectual property ownership and creating a software Bill of Materials (BoM).

Protecode’s Mahshad Koohgoli on Software Intellectual Property and the Cisco Open Source Lawsuit | TMCnet.com

Free Software Foundation’s Richard Stallman Says Don’t Call It ‘Open Source’

TheOpenAnalyst — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:28:00 +0000

GNU guru Richard Stallman sent me an e-mail the other day complaining that we erred by saying that the Free Software Foundation, of which he’s president, promotes open source software. “We have never supported the idea of ‘open source’ because that idea denies the importance of users’ freedom,” he writes. Read on for the dizzying semantics behind Richard’s argument, and why I think his obsessive attempts at language control are shooting his own software objectives in the foot.

Believe me when I tell you I’m sympathetic to a big part of Stallman’s case. I get that he’s hung up on how Linux has stolen all the thunder from GNU, and that he must be ticked Linus Torvalds is the face of open source software when he was the guy beating the drums first, and most loudly.

Free Software Foundation’s Richard Stallman Says Don’t Call It ‘Open Source’ | Wolfe’s Den Blog | InformationWeek

Open source isn’t free software

TheOpenAnalyst — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:28:00 +0000

There’s a long standing argument over the differences between “open-source” software and “free” software. But, a more common error outside of software ideology circles is that you can use open-source software anyway you please. Nope. Wrong. It’s never been that way.

Cisco, the networking giant, should know better than this, but they’ve worn out the FSF’s (Free Software Foundation) patience. So, Cisco is now being sued by the SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) on behalf of the FSF for Linux and other GPL copyright violations.

Open source isn’t free software | Computerworld Blogs