Cisco makes peace with Free Software Foundation - Computerworld Blogs

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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Cyber Cynic

May 20, 2009 - 1:40 P.M.

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."

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 ...

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