The Free Software Foundation has sued Cisco (PDF) over the open source code used by its Linksys division. It's essentially a copyright violation case. The FSF says:
Most of these programs are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and the rest are under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Both these licenses encourage everyone, including companies like Cisco, to modify the software as they see fit and then share it with others, under certain conditions. One of those conditions says that anyone who redistributes the software must also provide their recipients with the source code to that program. The FSF has documented many instances where Cisco has distributed licensed software but failed to provide its customers with the corresponding source code.
The FSF says it has been working with Cisco since 2003, when it bought Linksys, and that this is the first time it has had to go to court in 15 years.
In a statement, Cisco says:
Cisco is a strong supporter of open source software. Cisco takes its open source software obligations and responsibilities seriously and is disappointed that a suit has been filed by the Free Software Foundation related to our work with them in our Linksys Division. We are currently reviewing the issues raised in the suit, but believe we are substantially in compliance. We have always worked very closely with the FSF and hope to reach a resolution agreeable to the company and the foundation.
The FSF was founded by Richard Stallman, who also created the GPL and started the development of the GNU operating system (from Gnu's Not Unix).
