[Asterisk-biz] Asterisk Ffork - OpenPBX.org

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Paul wrote:

> The question that raises is: How does a GPL fork differ enough to lose 
> those waivers? Suppose I write several thousand lines of GPL patches to 
> a GPL-released asterisk. I put the patch set and the original asterisk 
> tarball on my ftp/http servers. I don't see much difference between that 
> and a forked project as far as license issues go.

There is a huge difference.

An original Asterisk distribution plus patches is still called Asterisk, 
since it is the source code that was distributed by the owner of the 
Asterisk trademark.

If you modify the code and distribute it, you cannot call it Asterisk, 
since you are not the trademark owner. Once the name 'Asterisk' is not 
applicable to the source code, the GPL exceptions that Digium has 
granted do not apply, since they are granted to 'Asterisk', not to 'the 
collection of source files known as Asterisk'. It's legal semantics, but 
it's very important legal semantics :-)