Netgear now touting open source WRT-compatible wireless router

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Tue Jul 1 18:55:50 EDT 2008


On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Alex Hewitt <hewitt_tech at comcast.net> wrote:
>> I thought with Cisco, the IOS (firmware) license wasn't
>> transferable, so even if you bought used hardware, you still had to
>> buy an IOS license from Cisco?
>
> Really?

  That's what I've been told, and some Google work appears to confirm.
 The license itself [1] just states it is "nontransferable", which
might be subject to interpretation.  But, while they don't exactly
make it easy to find, I eventually dug up [2], which clearly states,
"Cisco software licenses are not transferable from user to user."

[1] http://www.cisco.com/public/sw-license-agreement.html
[2] http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/partner/products/ps2978/c1592/ccmigration_09186a00801e4ea8.pdf

> I would have thought the IOS license would go with the hardware.

  You'd think so, but this is Cisco.  They didn't get rich by being
nice.  They're sometimes called the Microsoft of the networking world.

> That's one reason I like GPL'd stuff so much. Way less complicated.

  Amen, brother!  :-)

> I've been going through the Microsoft terminal/user/device/per processor/enterprise
> licensing cruft lately ...

  It helps to remember that you're not Microsoft's customer.
Microsoft's customers are their distributors and major resellers.
Theose companies benefit by having the licensing be so complex you
need their help to manage it all.  So Microsoft has no incentive to
make it easy.

-- Ben


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