They were producing proprietary derivatives of open source software, over a period of many years, in blatant violation of the license. How exactly is that friendly?

"Yeager recalls, two support staff members, Bosack and Kirk Lougheed, asked him for his original program so they could modify it for the new system. Bosack and Lougheed removed its ability to route non-Internet protocols, keeping its network operating system and related features and improving its Internet capabilities. Later, they added back other protocols.

Yeager said he didn't know that Bosack had recently incorporated Cisco and asked Stanford for permission to sell the Blue Box commercially. He had been denied." [1]

Their whole business was built on this "borrowing" principle, but eventually some of it fired back [2] on the "original" gang, when they went "public" (Sequoia, hated by Lerner).

In essence, the following quote sums it all up: ``The fundamental problem is: how do you negotiate an equitable agreement with crooks?''

[1] http://pdp10.nocrew.org/docs/cisco.html

[2] http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/serving_suits/cisco.html

... the other take-away:

"I fear the Cisco experience has done unseen damage to Stanford in the form of creating inhibitions against sharing ideas, information and developments with possible commercial value among our groups which have need to benefit from each other's work"

Blatant is not exactly the right word to describe the situation here.

http://tinyurl.com/5mw2ms

Cisco is a business not a child, I don't think they are going to take their toys and go home.

Thats exactly what they will do and business in general. Every lawsuit filed against a company violating GPL is another reason for companies not to use FOSS in the first place.

Here's how that will work out in a competitive market:

* Some companies will be fearful, because they don't understand, and, as you say, will indiscriminately avoid all open source software.

* Other companies will take the time and effort to understand what GPL, BSD, the Apache license, and the like mean and require of them, and as a consequence will be able to take advantage of open source software where it is appropriate. This will be a competitive advantage for them.

Perhaps but in the marginal case (Ie. for a company which is just on the edge of using a FOSS product), this could screw everybody over.

Only if they're clueless enough to not understanding the licensing. If you're basing your business on something, you should understand how it works, licensing included. It's really not all that difficult, and if you have doubts, there are tons of people you can ask for help. I've done a bit of that kind of work for pay in the past, although I obviously avoid actual 'legal' questions. I wouldn't mind getting more, but I don't think that it's that common, as it's just not that hard to understand, and there are tons of people who will answer questions for free.

How is it to be enforced then? Its been 5 yrs. If uptake was the goal, it would have been BSD or public domain.