Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Today, the FSF let Cisco Systems know in no uncertain terms that line had been crossed . The complaint centers on the Linksys brand routers, and the firmware used on those products. Brett Smith, the licensing compliance engineer at the FSF said that in 2003, the FSF was notified that the Linksys WRT54G used GPL/LGPL licensed code in its firmware, but customers weren't getting the source code that these licenses required Cisco supply . He said that initially, Cisco seemed willing to work with the FSF to put procedures in place so that its products -- at the time, and in the future -- would comply with the license terms the firmware used. Over the course of five years, a compliance plan never materialized. As the FSF investigated the Linksys WRT54G complaint, it was receiving license violation reports regarding other Cisco products. Smith says that new issues were being brought up before the older ones could be addressed, resulting in "...a five-years-running game of Whack-A-...

And HP and IBM are busy deploying storage in the meantime... On the practical front, the executive disclosures seem to have brought us no closer to the truth. Hitz has backed up claims that Sun's Zettabyte File System (ZFS) infringes on NetApp patents. In addition, he's effectively painted Sun as a type of patent bully that tries to pump money out of rivals by abusing its IP portfolio. Meanwhile, Schwartz has delivered a solid time line of events that seems to prove NetApp actually led the bullying. And, of course, Schwartz stands by Sun's claims not only that ZFS does not violate NetApp patents but also that NetApp's most popular software violates Sun patents. The executive spew - and we believe it's the first of its kind - simply mimics the turgid filings of lawyers in these types of arguments but with a bit more colorful language. Given that the blogging back-and-forth adds no muscle to the actual dispute between the companies, we're surprised that Hitz has c...