[asterisk-biz] Selling the source codefor asteriskcallcentersolution

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

just to clarify something, although it probably won’t ...

Patents, trademarks and copyrights cover different but similar things.  Its like 3 circles that only very slightly overlap.

Patents cover (many times anyway) more of the overall process of doing something, not the specific implementation.

Copyrights cover the specific implementation.  

For example g.729 is covered by a patent (ok, series of various patents) which is licensed out by the g.729 consortium.  But a specific g.729 implementation may be copyright by someone totally different.  

In that case you would have to honor both the copyright law (what the gpl is based on) as well as the patent law.  However, there are jurisdictional issues that arise because not every country has the same set of laws, and with respect to patents more specifically, one issued in country X may not be valid in country Y, so Y is free to do what they want under their laws.

Add to that basically bogus patents, which may exist and you are totally unaware of and you can have real problems.

The gpl does have a provision about patented code, the intent is to avoid situations where someone releases gpl code but then places additional restrictions on its use later that are not compatible with the gpl.  

This does not outright prevent patented code from being gpled, since that patent may not be valid everywhere, and the gpl can have a clause that only makes it valid in jurisdictions where its legal (there is a faq entry somewhere that discusses this type of arrangement).

This does make it hard to gpl code that uses a patented process, in spirit, unless there is a disclaimer on the patented stuff.  But its trivial to ship a defective license with a product.  The copyright holder, or authorized agents, can’t violate the gpl on their own stuff (ie what they have unlimited rights to) only with stuff they don’t have rights to.  There is also a gpl faq entry about that. 

I believe this is one ason the fsf wants you to assign copyright to them, and not keep it yourself, that would prevent you from being able to do anything with your code you wanted, instead it would be only what they wanted.

If I own both patent and copyright to my code, no one could really do anything legally to me if I gpled that code.  At most, if a law existed on defective products they could have a claim there since the product can’t be used under the gpl license I choose.  

Further the gpl only matters if DISTRIBUTION happens.  For example commercial modules could be written for asterisk, so long as they don’t use asterisk gpl code, link to asterisk gpl code and are not distributed with asterisk gpl code.  The fsf was clear on this issue with asterisk specifically. 

This probably just muddies the waters rather than anything else, but ...