Today, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) sued Cisco for violations of the GPL and LGPL. The complaint basically revolves around Cisco's failure to provide the source code for GPL-licensed software used as the basis of many of their routers. (The FSF is the copyright holder for GCC and the GNU C Library.)
According to this article in the FSF blog, the issue began several years ago when the FSF learned that the popular Linksys WRT54G home router used a GNU/Linux system in its firmware. Cisco did agree to make the modified source code available for download on its website, but the FSF reports that the sources were incomplete or out-of-date. Also, despite Cisco providing written offers to provide source (an option provided by the terms of the GPL), such requests regularly went unfulfilled.
It seems that the bottom line for the FSF in this case was that Cisco was benefiting from FSF's copyrighted software to create its routers, but preventing its customers from benefiting in turn from their rights under the GPL/LGPL licenses under which the FSF made the software available. In the words of the FSF, "Cisco has denied its users the right to share and modify the software".
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