I've worked at Cisco, and the general attitude among many (not all) is that they don't care about GPL violations. Linux is used as it's the fastest path to get the products out.

The reason why this will be unsettling to Cisco is because some of the products have integrated key IOS files in order to retain backwards compatibility. Which means that those files now fall under the GPL. And the only way to integrate them is to use various Linux API's. That is, key files are derived works from the GPL. From the bootstrap code on up.

But, since these files are key to IOS as well, one could take the view that IOS is now under the GPL.

One could try to maintain that those files need to be dual-licensed. However, though some hold that to be valid, I don't believe such a dual license has ever been held up in court. So that might get interesting if the FSF wanted to push it. In any case, it could be a useful bargaining chip.

In any case, those files don't have the appropriate copyrights stating how they are licensed.

The amusing part here is that this has come about mostly because of Cisco's dedication to using as much H1-B/L1 labor as possible. It's been those guys who have mostly (not entirely) done this work in order to get things done quickly. And believe me, protestations about the licensing have been ignored completely when they've been raised. Hack-it-in quickly and damn the lawyers has been the attitude.

It's very amusing to see that Cisco's use of cheap labor has come back to bite them in a way that has the potential to cost them more money than if they had done things in the right fashion originally.

The same thing applies to Symbian - at one point they statically linked GPL code to the OS Kernel, so technically the whole OS should be GPL'd. Which means they ought to release all the source code to customers years ago. This is not something they want to do - their recent announcements have been about releasing the source code to selected components over time.

Posting AC because I fear their lawyers.

Don't buy a linksys, but do buy one of the ones with similar hardware.

When I bought my Asus WL-500g Premium it shipped with the complete modified linux source in a folder on the CD that contained the usual windows-crapware you seem to get with every product these days (you know, the outdated copy of acrobat reader, some documentation wrapped in a shiny executable and such).

I did install OpenWRT on it, and I'm very happy with the result. I'm also happy with Asus for actually shipping the source, but I never did write them a line and told them. Maybe I should.

yeah - probably true.

Part of this was a chain reaction. Linksys was a low end router company and they adopted Linux to save money on development. As such, they had no need to cripple their routers to not compete against their high end brand, since they didn't have one. Unfortunately for Cisco, who bought them, they do have a high end brand, and releasing the source for their low end brand that people have tuned to outperform their high end routers (with overclocking and mods) is not really in their best interest (illegal, yes, in best interest, no).

Personally, I think they were gambling as long as possible that the FSF wouldn't file a suit.

It could be a misunderstanding of the GPL or bad advice from an expert. Why, if I asked a question about the GPL, I would get dozens of posts each having their own and differing "expert" opinion of what is meant.

Yes, it could be a misunderstanding. Especially when FSF has spent five years communicating with Cisco trying to resolve the issue peacefully. If there's a misunderstanding, the people at Cisco need to get some working brains...

The amusing part here is that this has come about mostly because of Cisco's dedication to using as much H1-B/L1 labor as possible. It's been those guys who have mostly (not entirely) done this work in order to get things done quickly.

This is an interesting statement. If my experience with on/offshoring at large companies is any indication (and I assure you it is), the H1-B guys were simply taking orders from a US-based manager or director. Those kinds of decisions are not made in Pune or Gurgaon.

This could send the wrong message. If you Use bootleg proprietary software and make a lot of money from it you will get Sued. Details of the reasons will fade just the face the proprietary software is considered to Risky for a corporate environment. You better off getting a License from GPL as you can choose to agree to the terms before hand, then going with a product which wile may be backed by a big company will have a bunch of people ready to pounce on you if you make this code successful.

The really weird thing is that the WRT54G, with Linux, cost $50 years ago. The new WRT54G, with less hardware, cost -- guess what -- $50 today! Or, alternatively, the WRT54GL costs more than $50. Isn't hardware supposed to get cheaper and better over time, rather than worse or more expensive?

Cisco is being REALLY REALLY stupid here and I just don't understand why.

I've done a lot of commercial software that uses LGPL and GPL code, and its not rocket science. RMS himself even says that "mere aggregation" is not a problem.

Here are the rules:

if its LGPL, link to it, but don't modify it. If you need to modify it, make the modification in the form of a generic API extension and call it from the application. Make your extensions public.

If it is GPL, make it a service and call it through a socket.

If it is a kernel module, there seems to be some wiggle room there, otherwise make a public mini-driver and a proprietary user space app.

How hard is that? Jeez, if you screw up GPL compliance, you are not paying attention.

If I were in the FSF shoes then I'd go for every penny I could get. They need to drive home the message that if companies want to play the Free Software game, they have to give back. If companies think they can rip off GPL software and then get off cheap five years later then they wont respect the GPL. Remember Cisco would have gained significant advantage in terms of saved development costs by ripping off the GPLed software named in the suit.

I don't think that would scare too many firms away. The no-licensing cost aspect of GPL software makes it too tempting for firms who don't necessarily gain any advantage from using proprietary software. Much easier to just slap something together using Free Software and pay a programmer to customise it for whatever product it is you want to sell.

To give more context:

More than a decade ago I interned at Lucent BCS (Now Avaya), doing, among other things, cost-to-build analysis of other products for comparison to ours. i.e. "how much profit is the other guy making".

An interesting story was that Lucent business phones had this two-LED (one red one green) indicator system for each line button.

There were effectively ongoing holy wars over the UI benefits of the extra 4-8 low-brightness SMT LEDs per phone vs. the 10-20 cent cost of said LEDs on a high end business phone that sold for $200+ per unit.

It's a funny thing, but my experience with BSD in a corporate environment is that it doesn't end up as much of a success. There are some exceptions, but even in the case of OS-X, Apple seems to have completely failed to build the community they wanted at the beginning. Most other cases, starting with BSD/OS (BSD 386) [wikipedia.org] and going through IPSO, Ipsilon's [wikipedia.org] home grown BSD based OS, and many others you haven't heard of (AlchemyOS etc.) end up completely dead. Even Microsoft's TCP stack seems to have been rewritten with little BSD left behind.

I think the reason the BSD code dies is precisely because of it's non copyleft license. The companies mostly know that the best way to handle maintenance is to contribute back to the original developer. However, that's not a requirement of the license and so needs to be agreed to by the corporate lawyers. Separately for each contribution. The always want a justification and it just isn't worth any programmer's effort. With GPL code, the fact you have to give back makes the justification very easy to provide. That puts the corporate developers easily in touch with the "community" of other developers on that software and makes the development end up more successful. I'd love to hear other explanations for this. The main data point I have is that across a bunch of different projects I have seen, it always seems that the GPL ones have an active process for contributing back and have developers who are active and known in the original development community. On the other hand the BSD ones, even though they've included a number of former BSD developers don't seem to and those developers seem to give up on making contributions back to the original system.

I know that's CISCO, in this case is probably not really getting as much benefit from this as they could if they followed the GPL, but I think there gets to be a general perception that Linux leads to success and BSD leads to dead ends. People select software based on that perception

CallManager 5.x, Redhat-based
CallManager 6.x, Redhat-based

Content Engine (CE560,CE590): Redhat-based

MDS switches: Redhat-based.
NM-NAM module for routers: Redhat-based

Some 7600/Catalyst 6500 service modules: Linux-based.

Want proof?
Connect to the console for a cold boot... Redhat is explicitly mentioned.

Heck, the update patches for some of the modules are UNSIGNED RPM's.

The interesting thing is that the modules have router/switch backplane connectivity, i.e. that Linux on the module has a network interface that is attached to the router/switch, and the Router/Switch sees the module as one or more interfaces... Drivers anyone?

The NM-NAM may also use other open source code as the basis for analysis and display of collected NetFlow data...

The initial install images may contain more common file formats, (Gzip, cpio, tar) with proprietary headers prepended...

Busting images open is an excercise for some geek with time and CCO access thats entitled to updates for the products they want to investigate.

Oh, my.

Imagine, for a moment, that various $BIG_COMPANIES decide they want to be able to use code from free software in their products without a fuss, while still keeping protection for their own code.

So, what they do is approach various national governments, WIPO, etc., and have copyright protection removed from source code.

The companies then sit back with the fact that their binary code is still copyright protected, and their source code is safely hidden under "trade secret" protections . . . but the source code of free software is neither copyrighted nor secret. So the companies can take the known, non-copyrighted source code from free software, and combine it with their secret source code to make their copyrighted binary blobs . . .

According to the complaint, "On May 12, 2006, Plaintiff notified Defendant of Defendant's unlawful conduct based upon its failure to comply with the Licenses for GCC and Binutils, with it distributed in object code form on its website." (That's the first contact that the FSF acknowledges, which is 2 1/2 years, not the 5 that everyone keeps repeating.)

I believe there is a three-year statutory limitation, so they can only persue violations that occured within the last three years.

Try the MDS9000 series. (Big SAN switches)
And what about the Content Engine Series.

Toss in (Some) Catalyst 6500 Services modules and (Some) NM's and AIM's; NM-NAM certainly does, including ethereal, except the NAM has a REAL NetFlow 9 collector/analyzer.

Bust open some install images and look and see, if you aren't able to console into them...

Profits from the MDS9000 series will hurt, since the software licenses are pure profit... and are the expensive part.

Licenses for Cat 6k SM's aren't exactly cheap either, although most of those do not run Linux.

Wrong again. Once you are in violation of your license, you are in violation of your license; releasing the code at that point may earn you brownie points, or you may be able to work out a deal whereby the rightholder does not seek redress, but you have still violated your license even if you attempt later to fulfill your obligations under it.