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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Cyber Cynic

Cisco makes peace with Free Software Foundation

17 comments

TAGS:Cisco, Free Software Foundation, GPL, lawsuit
IT TOPICS:Management, Mobile & Wireless, Open Source, Software

Last December, the Free Software Foundation sued Cisco for copyright infringement. Some people saw this battle being like a moth tackling a light-bulb-a total no win situation for the moth. But, a few months later, what do we find? Cisco is making friends with the free software instead of burning it to a crisp.

According to today's Free Software Foundation's press release, "Cisco has agreed to appoint a Free Software Director for Linksys, a subsidiary of Cisco, to supervise Linksys' compliance with the requirements of free software licenses such as the GPL (the GNU General Public License). The Free Software Director will report periodically to the FSF regarding Linksys' compliance efforts"

In addition, "Cisco has further agreed to take certain steps to notify previous recipients of Linksys products containing FSF programs of their rights under the GPL and other applicable licenses, to publish a licensing notice on the Linksys website, and to provide additional notices in a separate publication. … Cisco will continue to make the complete and corresponding source code for versions of FSF programs used with current Linksys products freely available on its website. Cisco will also make a monetary contribution to the FSF."

In a statement, Peter Brown, Executive Director of the FSF, said, "We are glad that Cisco has affirmed its commitment to the free software community by implementing additional measures within its compliance program and dedicating appropriate resources to them, further reassuring the users' freedoms under the GPL. Our agreement results in making all of the relevant source code available in the fastest way possible."

So much for the delusions that some people have over the differences between 'free as in beer' software and open source and that the GPL isn't any good anymore.

The successful resolution of this case shows me that smart businesses can easily work with open-source code for the benefit of the companies, their customers, and the open-source community. Microsoft, which just ended up ticking off people with its TomTom lawsuit and now has people tracking down the evidence needed to blast away some of its patent portfolio should pay attention. Cisco's showing that there's a better way to handle open-source related IP (intellectual property) problems.

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Linksys and open firmware...

Submitted by Anonymous on May 21, 2009 - 9:35 A.M.

I'm not so sure that Linksys is wanting to give up on using Linux for their firmware. There is a distinct market for their products in those who want to use OpenWRT or DD-WRT (despite DD-WRT's quasi commercial leanings). I count myself as one of them. Sure, it voids your warranty to re-flash a Linksys router with someone else's firmware,... but when you get $600 router functionality from a $70 router,... who cares?!?! Linksys even re-released the compatible versions of the wrt54g as the wrt54gl ("L" for Linux, unofficially) to pander to the open source crowd.

If they have IP for a particular chipset they don't want released into the wild,... they always have the option of developing a model or two that uses it using Symbian or something similar. However, Linksys doesn't really develop their own internal parts,... just use other vendor's chipsets in their router configurations. The only advantage in closing the source on a router is if they believe that they can release crippleware firmware for a cheap consumer version of a model and re-release the same hardware with fully enabled firmware for much more $$$ without increasing development cost... That potential didn't stop them from releasing their Linux based routers before,... So I doubt they'd employ that strategy now... Besides,... someone would probably open up one of their routers, find out what they did and tell the whole world that they were greedy cheapskates for doing it... And then there's always Belkin, Asus, or some other manufacturer.

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What about the future

Submitted by Anonymous on May 20, 2009 - 7:27 P.M.

Cisco was so far in the wrong that they would automatically lose in court. Losing to the FSF is a bad thing, so they threw in the towel early. They committed a Tsar of GPL, a few bucks and a commitment to abide by the GPL in the future.

Here are a couple questions. Does Cisco consider the GPL'd code important enough to continue developing it? Or, does Cisco consider giving their code to the world a waste of time, money and competative advantage?

If Cisco considers the Linksys code that important, they may keep developing. If they consider giving away their IP more important, maybe they'll dump the GPL'd code and write proprietary. They do have the skillset to re-write the code.

Come back in a few months and revisit this one. If Cisco keeps the GPL alive and well in their shop, then all is well. If Cisco decides to terminate GPL development, that's a whole different story.

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Linksys is mostly mass

Submitted by Anonymouse on May 21, 2009 - 1:43 A.M.

Linksys is mostly mass consumer products (as opposed to corporate products); since there is free software to do all the work that needs to be done, why waste time and money developing your own? I see no reason why CISCO/Linksys would drop free software; if they develop their own then they lose any competitive advantage to others that use free software to do the same job.

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It's not free to Cisco / Linksys

Submitted by Anonymous on May 21, 2009 - 10:24 A.M.

Since Cisco pays to develop the software (yes, they do pay developers to write the router software), the software has cost, the software is considered an asset to the corporation and the labor to create that software is depreciated according to standard accounting priniciples.

Don't know why you think it's free. They paid to have the final versions developed to their standards. The community may have assisted, but the final coding to Linksys specs was done by Linksys at their expense.

This still begs the question. Will Cisco continue down the GPL path or diverge, abandoning the code. I can see reasons to do either and after all, Managment isn't always rational.

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Could you be more precise please ?

Submitted by Anonymous on May 21, 2009 - 12:53 A.M.

First of all, Cisco by itself has had no problem with GPL compliance for their products as far as I know. It's Linksys that is messing with GPL and Cisco now the owner of Linksys has to sort this out.
With this in mind, your second paragraph is quite confusing. Usually this kind of troubles arrive when a company is using/including GPL code in one of its products and not because it is developing GPL code. By choosing to develop under GPL you know in advance what your obligations are (even though later on you might realize a proprietary license would have been preferable for you). There is one major reason for companies to use GPL code: reducing development cost by sharing it with a community at large. Since Linksys (now Cisco) is selling hardware+software, reducing software development costs might be profitable for them. As for giving away their precious IP (this is Microsoft's favorite propaganda argument) they have the legal obligation to comply with the license, no matter if it's GPL or proprietary. In short, this theory of GPL as a viral license that contaminates your code forcing you to donate your precious IP doesn't hold much water. Don't take my word for it, just look at Oracle and IBM to see how they work with GPL making tons on money without the slightest inconvenient.

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Fully agree on GPL

Submitted by Anonymous on May 21, 2009 - 9:37 A.M.

If you choose to develop under the GPL, you'd better understand and abide by the legal requirements of the GPL. LinkSys was wrong in withholding that code from the community.

However, LinkSys was purchased and the problems were purchased with Linksys by Cisco.

Cisco was well aware of the issues long before FSF sued in court, so Cisco showed disdain for the GPL. Therefore, the question still arises, what will Cisco do in the next 6 or 12 months. Will they continue to build LinkSys code under the GPL, or abandon the GPL for proprietary code? No one here really knows the answer, as I suspect even Cisco hasn't made a decision yet.

While many people show great disdain for IP, it is protected by law and is an asset to any corporation. Corporate responsibilities are first to the Stock Holder, way down the list comes the Open Source community. Balancing these responsibilities may cause Cisco to make decisions not popular with many.

Only time will tell, so the subject should be revisited in 6 or 12 months after Cisco makes clear their intent.

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Whoa, hold your horses, my friend!

Submitted by Anonymous on May 22, 2009 - 9:37 P.M.

You're taking us too fast! Are you trying to tell us it is OK for companies to make use of GPL software but obligations towards the open source community can be put way down the list ? In this case let me remind you that GPL actually is a license fully protected by copyright laws like any proprietary license. The open source community doesn't really like to call their work IP but this doesn't mean their work can be pilfered. The reason why FSF files this kind of lawsuits is that they care a lot about the protection of their license (see, they certainly do not show any disdain for IP). So I guess you agree that abiding current laws must go before stock holders interests.

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Combining several different concepts

Submitted by Anonymous on May 23, 2009 - 3:23 P.M.

First, yes, if a corporation develops under the GPL, they absolutely must abide by the requirements of the GPL. That's the law.

As for the GPL being lower on the totem pole,it goes like this:

There are two, possibly conflicting, sets of responsibilities corporations must balance here.

1. GPL. Once they sign on, the GPL must be met. GPL requires that software developed and distributed under GPL be returned to the community.

2. Protection of corporate assets that benefit Stock Holders.

If managment (or stock holders with good lawyers) deem that continuing to develop under the GPL gives away corporate assets that should be kept proprietary for the benefit of the stock holder, management may at their discression cease development under the GPL.

This would be a VERY PAINFUL corporate decision as the entire product line they previously developed under the GPL would be abandoned and the new product re-written without any code from the original product as the original code is still covered by GPL.

This is a management decision. While it may seem idiotic to abandon the code used in Linksys routers, I've seen dumber decisions.

Basic point is that continuing to develop under the GPL is a management decision, not a technical decision.

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enh...I think you're overstating the position...

Submitted by Anonymous on May 20, 2009 - 8:16 P.M.

1) If you've NEVER done an OS distribution, it's hard, nasty coding work that costs quite a bit in terms of manpower dollars. If you think Cisco's willing to roll out something using IOS on this thin stuff or similar, think again.

2) Alternate, for pay, RTOS/Embeeded systems cost a pretty penny per unit sold. More, typically, than the costs for a person to support a common OS distribution such as OpenWRT or Angstrom/OpenEmbedded.

3) This stuff is common, "oops, we effed up" territory- companies do this crap all the time, even with the proprietary stuff. It's no different with GPLed stuff and the only penalty is removing the FOSS stuff or contributing your changes. If you're caught with something like MS' stuff or the like, you're going to think giving out the code to pieces you modified is a GREAT idea. ;-D

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The beauty of this is that it's all speculation

Submitted by Anonymous on May 21, 2009 - 1:51 P.M.

Since no one really knows what happened in the past six years since Cisco aquired Linksys, (June 2003), no one here really knows what Cisco thinks of the GPL, etc, everything stated here is speculation.

The three items above are three distinct alternatives, of which any one may be the end effect, or one of 100 other alternatives.

By the way, six years is a long time to be in the "oops, we effed up" territory. The FSF took every opportunity to bring Cisco into alignment before filing suit.

Now, lets see how rational management really is. I don't have any inside information, just raising a possibility for the future as Cisco definatly has the capabilities to rewrite the code in a year or two without any Open Source involvement. One never knows, it might already be on the shelf.

Point being that Cisco has one of two choices. Continue witht he GPL and abide by the requirements or abandon all GPL code and re-write. I'm just not sure how management will react. You never know.

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