Cisco's iPhone faces legal challenge

WHILE CISCO aims to take Apple to the cleaners to defend its iPhone trademark, it seems that the networking company is being sued for failing to share code in the Linux-based product.

According to IDG, the GPL Violations Project, which identifies and publicizes misuse of GPL is to take Cisco to court for not publishing the source code for some components of the WIP300 iPhone.

To use Linux, Cisco in the WIP300 iPhone Cisco was supposed to comply with the terms of the open-source GPL license and publish the code that it develops for the phone.

The Violations Project reverse-engineered the phone and confirmed that Cisco has neglected to share the code for a couple of programs in the phone, including the Memory Technology Device which is used to program the flash memory.

Cisco fixed some of the problems, but has yet to publish the relevant code from the WIP300 iPhone, the group says.

More here. µ