[Asterisk-Biz] SS7 available for Asterisk

[Andrew Thompson]

Alex Pui wrote:
> I confess that I am not expert on GPL. But by reading the following link, I
> still don't find which part gave Digium and only Digium the right to make
> money on Asterisk licensing?

Precisely the point.

You can go and make money with asterisk. I can go and make money with 
asterisk. Digium/Mark can make money with asterisk.

Here's the difference:

Mark can sell people copies of asterisk that are not GPL'ed, therefore 
the buyer can do whatever their non-gpl'ed license says they can do with 
the code, including selling compiled copies and not giving out the source.

You and I can sell a solution that includes asterisk, but we can't sell 
a license to use asterisk. We can grant it to someone*, based on the 
license as it was granted to us, but we can't sell someone a customized 
compiled copy of asterisk _without_ giving them access to the modified 
source.

*I might not have the terminology exactly right here, but there's 
flamewar every day on a open-source list mailing list somewhere that 
explains it better than I can.

-- 
Andrew Thompson
http://aktzero.com/
http://dev.asteriskdocs.org/