Dear Editor,

In response to Daniel Lyons'
piece, "Linux's Hit Men" dated October 14, 2003, I respectfully
disagree with the author's conclusions.

Lyons seems to take
offense that Cisco should be required to release the source code for
the router software used in their Linksys wireless router, which was
derived from GPL-covered code. When the Linksys engineers sat down to
design their product, they had three options for the software. They
could either a) license router software from another vendor, like
Microsoft, which developed the Windows CE embedded operating system, b)
write their own software from scratch, or, c) take advantage of code
developed by the open-source community. Since option a) would require
them to purchase a license for each router they sold, and thereby eat
into their profits, and option b) would surely cost millions of dollars
and months if not years of development time, they chose option c), with
full knowledge of the requirements of the GPL, which are completely
up-front, and in no way "onerous," as Mr. Lyons describes them. Where
licensing Windows CE from Microsoft requires you to pay Microsoft
money, licensing GPL software requires you to contribute back to the
pool of open source software from which you benefited.

Lyons
mentions that: "the $129 device has been a smash hit, selling 400,000
units in the first quarter of this year alone," and then goes on to say
that the "the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties--it wants
you to burn down your house..." The problem with that conclusion is
that Cisco didn't build the house. Their $129 device, of which they
have sold 400,000 units of, would have cost much more, and taken much
longer to develop and get to market if they hadn't leveraged the free
software provided by thousands of volunteers over the past ten years.
Is it too much to ask that they make a small contribution of software
back to the community, which provided them with software that allowed
them to make millions of dollars?

Finally, I question the
author's motives and biases. I wonder how Mr. Lyons would have reported
this story if Cisco were distributing Windows CE on their devices,
without paying royalties to Microsoft, or failing to abide by the far
more restrictive policies in their license? The author states that "For
months, in secret, the Free Software Foundation...has been making
threats..." when, in fact, it has been widely reported in the technical
media that the FSF has made requests for the source code from Cisco.
The language of the article makes Linux sound like some of
shadow-communist conspiracy. "Linux's Hit Men?" "The dark side of the
free software movement?" "Comrade?"

Some objectivity and a modicum of research, please, Mr. Lyons.