This lawsuit was filed in December 2008. As it was stated in PATA 5900 on January 7, 2009 by Spencer, this is a case where the first course of action by the Free Software Foundation was to first bring the copyright violation to the offender's attention (in this case, the offender is Cisco) and request that they stop violating their copyright. This request was originally documented in May 2006.
A brief summary of the story is that the Free Software Foundation came up with some programs that can be distributed and modified by whoever chooses to use it. They are a non-profit organization who's license states specifically that the software that they provide. For-profit organizations can also use and distribute the software, but they must provide the "source code" to enable the users to modify it as is their right through the Free Software Foundation. Discussions were had as early as 2003 to assist Cisco with compliance.
Why would such a large company knowingly continue to infringe on the rights of a non-profit organization?
http://www.fsf.org/news/2008-12-cisco-suit
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This seems like a case where a big company, like Cisco, is not going to make corrective actions, and do what is right, until they are forced to do so. Now that this is a public issue, and they have filed a suit, I imagine
ReplyDeleteCisco will take action and do what needs to be done to do to comply with the license requirements.
Jamie could be right in that the large corporation will neglect the matter until it becomes a PR nightmare. Or, it could be that Cisco has only plucked the code from Free Software Foundation in it's most basic form. If Cisco copies only the software's functionality, but arranges the code in a new or "creative" format, can't they get around copyright law?
ReplyDeleteSeems like a pretty fine line the way the law is written in the book. Free Software Foundation has probably met their requirements for copyright, but the form that Cisco expresses that software code in may differ sufficiently to deem those parts copied from Free Software as nonprotected.
Ok, just finished reading a couple articles on the litigation. It seems that Cisco has openly admitted there is some ground they need to make up in terms of compliance with the open source aspect of the license. Their general attitude seems to be that they are working towards getting there. However, one might argue that by taking their sweet time, they are able to profit on a market segment's full "product life", then release the open source aspects after they have made sufficient, or all, the money there is to be made on it.
Dave
Jamie and Dave,
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you. I'm thinking that this is a case where Cisco is hoping that the Free Software Foundation will "give up" the fight due to the length of time it's taking to find a resolution.
I think it's a case of "big company" vs. "little company". In a lot of these cases, the "little company" cannot afford to carry the fight any longer. I'm hoping the "little company" wins and is able to benefit from the profits that Cisco will see as a result of their program.