21 May 2009, 08:19

FSF and Cisco Settle - Officially

The Free Software Foundation and Cisco have announced that they have reached a joint agreement and settled the law suit which the FSF initiated in December. The settlement announcement, which had been expected after an order to dismiss, was filed with the district court, sees Cisco agreeing to appoint a Free Software Director for the Cisco subsidiary Linksys who will enforce the company's compliance with the terms of the GPL. Cisco have also agreed to notify customers who have received products which contain FSF programs of their rights with regard to the GPL and to publish notices on their web site. The settlement also involves Cisco making a monetary contribution to the FSF of an undisclosed amount.

The FSF say they will be monitoring Cisco's future compliance, and to that end, the Linksys Free Software Director will also produce periodic reports for the FSF on progress. FSF Executive Director Peter Brown said "Our agreement results in making all of the relevant source code available in the fastest way possible". FSF Compliance Engineer Brett Smith commented "This is the first time we have had to go to court..." adding "Ideally, we'd prefer to simply not see license violations".

(djwm)

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