Cisco settles with FSF after filching free software

CISCO SETTLED its court spat with the Free Software Foundation (FSF) over the unauthorised use of free software in the Linksys routers the company makes.

The FSF sued Cisco in December after spending to two years trying resolve the situation after it found that code used in Linksys routers was covered by the GNU General Public Licence (GPL).

As part of the settlement Cisco will appoint a free software director for Linksys, who will ensure that GPL code is used properly and report back to the FSF on a regular basis.

Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF, said the Foundation was, "glad that Cisco has affirmed its commitment to the free software community by implementing additional measures within its compliance program and dedicating appropriate resources to them, further reassuring the users' freedoms under the GPL,"

Cisco also said it would contact customers to inform them of changes to their contract terms and conditions, as well as confess publicly on its web site that it had used free software rather than cobbling together its own. It will also pay an undisclosed settlement fee to the FSF.

On its bog, the FSF said it didn't take on such cases to make money or wreck businesses, but merely gets involved in order to preserve the integrity of the GPL. µ