Linux Solutions

FSF (the Free Software Foundation), the organisation behind the GPL open source licence, has decided to file a lawsuit against Cisco for copyright infringement, demanding an injunction against the networking company.

The FSF filed the suit yesterday at a Federal court in New York, alleging the Cisco’s Linksys consumer network equipment divisions have violated the terms of the license of programs of which the FSF holds the copyright. According to the FSF the two companies have been working together since 2003 to ensure that licensing rules are adhered to.

The FSF claim that Cisco has been distributing public copies of firmware that contains the FSF’s programs “without providing complete and corresponding source code or an offer for source code as required by the Licenses,” since May 2006, listing 13 Linksys products as the culprits.

The organisation would like the courts to stop Cisco from distributing the 13 products and are demanding damages. As well as this, the organisation wants Cisco to turn over any profits made from the products.

Licensing compliance engineer at the FSF, Brett Smith, said the organisation wants Cisco to comply with all the relevant free software licences throughout their product range, and has also requested that the company appoints a free software compliance officer that would be responsible for making sure Cisco remain compliant after this case is resolved.

Cisco have responded to the lawsuit with a statement that says the company is disappointed about the FSF’s accusations, claiming that its takes its free software obligations seriously:

“We are currently reviewing the issues raised in the suit but believe we are substantially in compliance. We have always worked very closely with the FSF and hope to reach a resolution agreeable to the company and the foundation.”

Cisco acquired Linksys back in 2003 for around $50 million, but there acquisition came with an open source problem in the Linksys WRT54G wireless “G” network router. The problems with the device stemmed from the fact the router used open source software, but they never released the software to end users – a requirement of the FSF’s open source license.

Smith said cried foul of Cisco’s non-compliance: “It’s not difficult to find ’source code’ on the Linksys site,” he said. “But you only have to dig a little deeper to find the problems. Those source code downloads are often incomplete or out-of-date. Cisco also provides written offers for source, but we regularly hear about requests going unfulfilled.”

“We also have serious reservations about their ability to ensure that they comply with relevant free software licenses in the future,” Smith added. “Addressing these issues is every bit as important as fixing the existing violations, but in our discussions Cisco seemed uninterested in doing so.”