Legal experts chime in about what's really behind the Free Software Foundation's legal action against Cisco, and what it means for the industry.

Reassuring news arrived from The Inquirer, which says that a legal challenge to the BSI might be served in addition to a formal complaint and a large-scale investigation by the European Commission. It could soon become the third vector of scrutiny.

Microsoft starts legal action with accusations against Linux

Linux is only for geeks. Windows is easy to use. Linux is hard. You have to use the command line under Linux. You never need to use the console under windows. Windows is all point and click. You have to be a wiz at computers to be able to use Linux. Anybody can use windows.

Even though SCO has suffered another legal defeat, the company looks like it has enough willpower, if not sense, to keep its legal losing streak going.

For decades, almost no one challenged the General Public License in legal matters. In fact, no one has even dared to try to break it in court. That record remains unsullied as the biggest company to date--Verizon--that had been accused of a GPL violation opted to settle out of court.

I would have thought that this issue had been dead and buried however, unfortunately there are still those out there who believe that installing software is easier under windows than under Linux. Let me tell you right now, it is not!

Developers, exercising their legal right specify their own licensing terms, have come up with some pretty whacky stuff. Fact or fiction? Some software is only legal to use after you are dead.

A French publishing company, Les Editions de Minuit, has brought criminal charges against a professor in Argentina for making Spanish translations of classic works of philosophy available for free on the internet, including Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida.