Jan said:
I think that is not the real case.
For example 'Linux', apart from the kernel, say a 'Linux distribution',
is made up of many thousands of small programs / utilities, all written
(and some long time ago) and contributed for free.
Especially the essential ones.
In terms of the numbers of different open source applications, I'm sure
the great majority are written for free. But in terms of the the
importance of the software (measured by the number of people that use
it, and how critical it is to their systems), I think you'll find that a
great deal - perhaps the majority - is now commercially backed. The
next most important source of the code is the academic world - again,
the code is written and released as open source for a reason, not just
for fun. As you say, many of the essential components are old, but they
were often still done with commercial backing or at universities. The
commercial backing is not always easy to spot.
Are Alsa developers payed? SDL? The network stuff? I am not sure.
I am not a lawyer, but that is a right out lie, if they say that.
I think you'll find that the FSF do a great deal of research and
diplomacy before calling people "liar". I don't know the details of the
case, but I think it is safe to assume that they know more about the
case than *you* do, and if they say that Cisco are not following their
responsibilities and obligations under the GPL, then I'm sure they have
good reason for it. And I'm pretty sure they have already looked at the
site you reference.
Here is the proof, and my site has linked against that
for more then a year now:
ftp://ftp.linksys.com/opensourcecode/
All the sources of all their products! The site is up, and has been up
for as long as I used the Linksys routers.
There is a small piece of propriety code in my router, something to do with some
switches, that I am not sure the source is available for, but I can
add propriety code to anything I want.
Those sources are complete, at least the one I used, it included
the cross compiler gcc, and I could recompile / cross compile on a x86
PC no problem.
See my project 'wapserver':
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/wap54g/index.html
I have posted about it on the Linksys forum (theirs), and I see many many
downloads of the code.
There is no doubt that a lot of code *has* come out of LinkSys -
personally, I use
www.openwrt.org on my LinkSys routers, and it is
historically based on LinkSys's own code. But that's a far cry from
being "proof" that Cisco/LinkSys are fully compliant with their
licensing requirements.
It seems to be a 'hot' item.
So why FSF complains to them that the source is not available is *not* clear
to me, and keeping a good relation with Cisco is more important to me,
suing them will likely not improve relations.
I'm sure it *will* be clear to you if you follow the case as it progresses.
Maybe I should re-release all my software under my own license?
Who gave the FSL authority to represent me anyways? Only self assigned
authority, have to re-read GPL2.
Did it now:
Shit it is copyright of the Free Software Foundation.
Have to find an other license.
The FSF are *not* representing you - they are representing themselves.
They own the copyright to code, or represent the owners of code, that
they feel Cisco is abusing (probably busybox). They don't represent
*you*, or your code, even if it is under the GPL (though they *will*
give you legal help if you ask them).
