[asterisk-biz] Asterisk Licensing Question

[Steve Totaro]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: trixter aka Bret McDanel [mailto:trixter at 0xdecafbad.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 6:59 AM
> To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
> Subject: RE: [asterisk-biz] Asterisk Licensing Question
> 
> On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 06:42 -0500, Steve Totaro wrote:
> > Contacting Digium sales would be a great place to start. 
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Saad Faisal [mailto:saad.faisal at amzxs.com]
> > > Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 6:46 AM
> > > To: 'Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion'
> > > Subject: RE: [asterisk-biz] Asterisk Licensing Question
> > > 
> > > Just to elaborate a little more, we intend to use and bundle 
> > > Asterisk for commercial purposes with the Open Source 
> version ( not 
> > > to be confused with Business Edition available from Digium).
> > > 
> 
> Since its not asterisk business edition, it falls under the 
> gpl (sorta, the issues with the gpl appear to be getting 
> resolved though).
> 
> The gpl allows you to sell products, so long as you make the 
> source available for what you sell (you are only required to 
> distribute the source to those that you distribute binaries 
> to).  This is similar to how redhat sells their 
> distributions.  According to the FSF you are free to include 
> commercial software on the same distribution so long as it 
> forms a "mere aggregation" and isnt part and parcel with the 
> GPL software.  
> 
> The gpl is viewable at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html 
> (ver 2 which covers most of asterisk).  
> 
> licensing at fsf.org will answer your questions, however if its 
> for commercial purposes they will require a fee to do that.  
> You may also forward that license to your lawyer and have 
> them decide what you are and are not allowed to do.  
> 
> The current distribution of asterisk contains GPL, LGPL, 4 
> clause BSD (NetBSD), and possibly other software, however 
> when its all distributed together the effective license is 
> supposed to be the most restrictive one, ie the GPL (section 
> 2c of the gpl).  The 4 clause BSD stuff cant be licensed 
> under the GPL (due to section 7 of the gpl) as such until 
> that code is replaced technically no one has any right to use 
> or distribute GPL asterisk becuase of a faulty license.  As 
> stated above this appearrs to be a work in progress, much has 
> been done over the last 2 weeks to get asterisk to comply 
> with the GPL, so its only a matter of time before the NetBSD 
> code gets replaced.
> 
> 

Here is an email I received from Digium about licensing, is this
referring to ABE?:

Asterisk is indeed available from Digium as a commercially licensed
product for customers that have applications for which the GPL is not
appropriate.  The license is granted per server (PC), and its price
depends on the number of simultaneous calls you plan to support, and the
number of licenses you purchase.  An annual maintenance agreement allows
you to receive updates and incorporate them into your product, and
extends the technical support and legal protections granted under the
license.

The license is intended for applications where there is the potential
for quantity sales.  Therefore, there is an initial up-front fee of
around $3000, and quarterly minimums of around that same amount that
commence within six months of the license.  These are somewhat dependent
on the size of the application and the legal fees we incur in drafting
and negotiating a custom agreement with you.

As a first step in the license process, we ask that your company sign a
mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement with Digium so we can confidentially
discuss your application in detail, and I can give you the license terms
and prices.  If that's acceptable, please respond to me directly at my
email address below (jwebster at digium.com), and I'll gladly forward to
you our standard NDA for your review.