FSF Settles Suit Against Cisco

[bogstad-e+AXbWqSrlAAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Bill Bogstad)]

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