Home
| Calendar
| Mail Lists
| List Archives
| Desktop SIG
| Hardware Hacking SIG
Wiki | Flickr | PicasaWeb | Video | Maps & Directions | Installfests | Keysignings Linux Cafe | Meeting Notes | Linux Links | Bling | About BLU |
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 10:45 PM, David Kramer <david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org> wrote: > http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-05-cisco-settlement.html > > For the most part, Cisco caved. ?They have to appoint a Free Software > Gestapo that will check in with the FSF. ?What's unclear to me what > power this person will have, other than letting the FSF know when they > need to fire up the lawyers again. It doesn't sound like the FSF even got their court costs for filing the lawsuit (or other costs) repaid. If that's the case, then the financially correct thing for a vendor to do is to calculate how much it would cost to be compliant and compare that with the potential future lawyer's fees to settle a non-compliance suit. Discount future lawyer's fees against current engineer's time and make the obvious financial calculation. Linksys (now a sub-division of Cisco) was first contacted back in 2003. Based on this, I'm guessing that Linksys/Cisco decided a long time ago that it was cheaper to wait for complaints about individual products (and finally lawsuits) then to actually do compliance correctly. Smaller vendors like Belkin, Trendnet, Rosewill, etc. probably figure the FSF will never get around to actually suing them. They might put some code out there, but I know from personal experience that it is not always fully compliant. Device driver object files which are statically linked into the GPL'ed Linux kernel. Modified cross-compiling GCC based build systems for which the source is not provided. Just enough to not make them an initial target of complaints or lawsuits. I'm not sure exactly what advantage the free software community gets for the conciliatory approach that the FSF has used in cases like this. The products that Linksys makes have a high turnover in the marketplace. If it takes a couple of years to actually get complete source code, the product will probably no longer be available for sale. Some hobbyist might be able add new functionality to a product they purchased off of ebay, but it isn't going to do much to get wide-scale functionality improvements available to most people. Even as an occasional developer/hobbyist, it doesn't help me that much to be able to add Asterisk PBX, IPv6, etc. support to my 3-5 year old 802.11g wireless router. I'm already thinking about switching my network to 802.11n. If the FSF doesn't get their costs of bringing a non-compliance suit repaid all a vendor has to do is make sure they are at the bottom of the list. Once FSF's donations (whether monetary or volunteer time) run out, the vendors at the bottom of the list are off the hook. I believe the FSF should work towards making non-compliance suits a self-funding part of their operations. Donations should go towards jump-starting such activities not continuing them. Now it may be that the FSF already does this. If so, it certainly isn't obvious to me. And if I'm not aware of it, I doubt if third-tier vendors are either. The point isn't to sue everybody, but to make a credible enough threat that upfront true compliance is less costly then waiting for complaints/lawsuits. Bill Bogstad
BLU is a member of BostonUserGroups | |
We also thank MIT for the use of their facilities. |