[Asterisk-Biz] SS7 available for Asterisk

[William Waites]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 03:01:11PM -0400, Jeremy McNamara wrote:
> 
> People that have a problem with the commercial deployment of Asterisk 
> very simply do not understand the GPL.
> Some light 'office' reading material:  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
> 

Jeremy, it's funny how this issue keeps comming up again and 
again. You are correct that, technically, the GPL allows this.
What Digium is doing is indeed legal. Barely.

However this is not the intent of the GPL. The FSF and the 
GPL's author have weighed in on this in the general case:

	To release a non-free program is always ethically tainted,
	but legally there is no obstacle to your doing this. If
	you are the copyright holder for the code, you can release
	it under various different non-exclusive licenses at various
	times. 

	http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCReleaseUnderGPLAndNF

as well as in this specific case, in a private email discussion
between the author of the GPL, the author of Asterisk, FSF legal
council and myself.

This is not a limitation of the GPL, but a limitation of copyright
law. What you mean by "do not understand the GPL" is really more
like "how to exploit copyright law to undermine the GPL".

And the argument of "Digium needs complete title to the software
to support G.729 because of patent issues" doesn't wash. All 
that needed to be done is to say "This software is released under
the terms of the GPL with the additional provision that it may be
linked with (binary only) implementations of G.729/G.723/etc."

The only reason for this is to exert tight centralized control
over an ostensibly Free Software project, and to retain the right
to sell other people's work without compensating them.

To any developers reading this, I suggest at least that you do NOT
sign away all your rights to Digium using this:

 http://www.digium.com/disclaim.changes

and DO use

 http://www.digium.com/disclaimer.txt

which, while allowing Digium to take your work and sell it, at
least lets you retain your right to do the same.

Digium has made the argument that since the disclaimers are based
on the FSF's own disclaimers that they are OK. The difference is
that Digium will use the rights granted them in order to profit 
from your work -- they /are/ a for-profit corporation after all.
When you sign rights over to the FSF on the other hand, you are
giving them to a not-for-profit origanization that holds them in
trust in order to guarantee that they are respected. There is a
BIG difference.

-w

(Standard disclaimer: this is my own personal opinion, I am not
speaking for the FSF, for my employer, or for anyone other than
myself)