[asterisk-app-dev] Asterisk and UniMRCP Licensing

[Ben Klang]

On Aug 28, 2014, at 6:20 PM, Matthew Jordan <mjordan at digium.com> wrote:

> Hey all -
> 
> In some previous conversations on the Asterisk mailing lists, we
> noticed that some users of Asterisk were using UniMRCP [1] with
> Asterisk, as well as some modules made and distributed by that
> project. Unfortunately, there were some licensing concerns with using
> UniMRCP with Asterisk. As such, we contacted the UniMRCP project
> regarding the licensing issues and, after discussing the issue with
> them, we believe we have found a good path forward such that users of
> Asterisk and UniMRCP can use both projects together without violating
> the license of Asterisk.
> 
> As you may know, Asterisk is licensed under the GPLv2. When Asterisk
> is statically or dynamically linked with a library, this creates an
> overall 'derivative work' as referred to in the GPL. Barring an
> exception, this means that any library Asterisk dynamically links with
> must be licensed under a GPLv2 compatible license. Unfortunately,
> UniMRCP is not licensed with a GPLv2 compatible license, as the Apache
> 2.0 license is not compatible with the GPLv2 [2]. This makes
> distribution of modules that link with Asterisk and UniMRCP
> problematic, as those modules technically should not be licensed under
> the GPLv2 - and hence should not be used with Asterisk under the GPLv2
> license.
> 
> That being said, we really like the UniMRCP project, and think it a
> great library for providing complex speech services. In the past, when
> faced with similar situations, we've added specific disclaimers to the
> licensing of the Asterisk project such that users are allowed to link
> Asterisk with specific libraries and distribute the resulting files.
> As such, we've modified the Asterisk license [3] to read the
> following:
> 
> "Specific permission is also granted to link Asterisk with OpenSSL, OpenH323,
> UniMRCP, and/or the UW IMAP Toolkit and distribute the resulting binary files."
> 
> This should make it easier for participants of both projects to use
> Asterisk with UniMRCP without violating the licenses of either
> project.
> 
> Hopefully this e-mail and the exception in the LICENSE file clears up
> any ambiguity that people may have had regarding Asterisk and the
> UniMRCP project.
> 

Fantastic news!  Thanks very much for getting this done Matt.  Having to manually build UniMRCP has been a big thorn in the side. I’m hopeful this means that we’ll soon see distributions package both UniMRCP and the associated Asterisk module.

Thanks for your continued leadership here and for making Asterisk that much easier to use.

/BAK/
-- 
Ben Klang
Principal/Technology Strategist, Mojo Lingo
bklang at mojolingo.com
+1.404.475.4841

Mojo Lingo -- Voice applications that work like magic
http://mojolingo.com
Twitter: @MojoLingo


> Thanks -
> 
> Matt
> 
> [1] http://www.unimrcp.org/
> [2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
> [3] http://svn.asterisk.org/svn/asterisk/trunk/LICENSE
> 
> 
> -- 
> Matthew Jordan
> Digium, Inc. | Engineering Manager
> 445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
> Check us out at: http://digium.com & http://asterisk.org
> 
> _______________________________________________
> asterisk-app-dev mailing list
> asterisk-app-dev at lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-app-dev

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