FSF to Cisco: It's Time to get Sued!

David Murphy — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:30:21 -0600

The Free Software Foundation filed suit in U.S. District Court today, alleging that networking giant Cisco violated FSF copyrights by not giving its users the ability to share and modify the open-source software it uses as the basis for some of its hardware. That's a mouthful, so here's what happened: According FSF, the company found that Cisco was using a GNU-licensed version of Linux to power its firmware. Only, Cisco wasn't giving its customers the full access to the source code that the GNU license specifies as a condition of use!

According to the FSF, the company has been working with Cisco in an attempt to repair these licensing issues since 2003, when the FSF first noticed that Cisco's WRT54G router was running Linux source code, yet offering purchasers no way to access that source code as stipulated in the accompanying GNU license. Cisco allegedly took the ball and ran with it, levying the same treatment for a wide swath of its networking products and accompanying software. That's how things got messy, and why the FSF decided to pursue legal action to protect its copyrights.

"Our licenses are designed to ensure that everyone who uses the software can change it," said Richard Stallman, president and founder of the FSF. "In order to exercise that right, people need the source code, and that's why our licenses require distributors to provide it. We are enforcing our licenses to protect the rights that everyone should have with all software: to use it, share it, and modify it as they see fit."

The complaint, which you can read for yourself, asks the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to enjoin Cisco from distributing the infringing products. FSF also seeks monetary rewards -- all the profits Cisco has made from said devices. That's an open-source nuke, if we've ever heard one! Cisco has yet to respond to the suit as of this article's writing. But if this case goes in the FSF's favor, the idea is that Cisco would have to release all of the code that it's mixed alongside the GNU-bound Linux code. At least, if Cisco intends to keep using code that falls under a GNU license, that's the way it has to work.

Linksys 54GX4 Wi-Fi

Michael Brown — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 14:51:58 -0600

The industrial-looking Linksys WRT54GX4 looks right at home in an IT department; less so in a home environment. But its 5-inch long antennae deliver excellent range when paired with the WPC54GX4 wireless network adapter.

We achieved unencrypted TCP throughput of 57.4Mb/s at a range of 75 feet from the access point, on an outdoor patio surrounded by trees, with two gypsum interior walls and one plywood-siding exterior wall in between (see “Environment 1” in the benchmark chart).

Testing inside the house approximately 25 feet from the access point, with four gypsum interior walls separating the laptop from the access point, we achieved average TCP throughput of 101.2Mb/s (see “Environment 2” in the benchmark chart).

The SRX400 combo supports WPA and WPA2 encryption, and we saw negligible throughput deterioration using those standards. But we then configured it to use the older 128-bit WEP encryption, because that’s the only standard recognized by both of the A/V streaming boxes we had. Imagine our surprise when we saw TCP throughput drop by more than 20 percent! Airgo tells us its performance-enhancement algorithms for WEP were disabled because the industry no longer considers it a secure encryption technique. Still, it’s the only technique supported by many streaming boxes and older laptops.

Month Reviewed: April 2006

+ GRASS-FED BEEF: Awesome speed; incredible range.

- FACTORY-FARMED BEEF: Butt-ugly formfactor; uncertain future compatibility.

VERDICT: 8

URL: www.linksys.com

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FSF to Cisco: It's Time to get Sued!

Linksys 54GX4 Wi-Fi