Stallman against Cisco
Dec. 19th, 2008 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paserbypLast week the Free Software Foundation filed suit(http://www.fsf.org/news/2008-12-cisco-suit) against Cisco Systems, Inc. for damages related to what they claim are violations of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL.) The alleged violations all seem to be related to failure to properly release source code for various Linksys products. The complaint filed in US District Court doesn't specify a dollar amount for requested damages, but asks to recover all profits from the specified products and stop Cisco from shipping them.
Those damages would no doubt be tens of millions of US dollars, which means Cisco is going to be inclined to take this pretty seriously.
This will be the biggest test to date of the FSF licenses, and of course, there are no sure bets in the court, even in seemingly straightforward contract law. The worst thing that could happen for the FSF would be a weakening or invalidation of the GPL and LGPL. The worst thing that could happen for Cisco is a major financial hit.
For details: http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Stallman-Calls-Out-Cisco---GPL-Violations-Alleged.html&Itemid=29
Those damages would no doubt be tens of millions of US dollars, which means Cisco is going to be inclined to take this pretty seriously.
This will be the biggest test to date of the FSF licenses, and of course, there are no sure bets in the court, even in seemingly straightforward contract law. The worst thing that could happen for the FSF would be a weakening or invalidation of the GPL and LGPL. The worst thing that could happen for Cisco is a major financial hit.
For details: http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Stallman-Calls-Out-Cisco---GPL-Violations-Alleged.html&Itemid=29
