[asterisk-biz] Digium's response to posting of G.729 and G.723 source code

[trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Wed, 2006-09-06 at 22:16 -0400, Shidan wrote:
> I honestly don't think these points would ever stand up in court. How
> can you include something 
> and say you can use it and freely redistribute and in fact you can
> modify it even as long as 
> you redistribute your modifications but then claim because of your
> trademark your earlier statement is not valid. 

Since copyright and trademark law is different, and since the gpl only
covers copyright, the answer I got from the FSF is that generally they
would ask the person releasing GPL stuff the way Digium does to no
longer call it GPL or to change their trademark policy.  This is because
they are going against the spirit and intent of the GPL by putting
barriers in place against distribution.  I got this response by emailing
licensing at fsf.org regarding this issue specifically.

But then the FSF also didnt seem to like the loader.c module that forces
all modules to be GPL by way of a lockout code preventing you from
releasing gpl compatible modules for example LGPL.  But then the courts
already ruled that its a legally invalid tactic when lexmark did the
same exact thing.

see http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+GPL+Compliance which has
links to that case and other stuff.

I asked last year what had to be done to make asterisk GPL compatible,
if a list of things exists that you had to change to be able to
redistribute it under the GPL and was verbally attacked by digium staff
for asking that question.  

If you are basing a business around Asterisk you would want to know that
what you are doing isnt going to land you in court, so it seemed
relevant to this list.  

I have even tried to get their legal department to speak up on some of
these issues, and clarify digiums intent. Dead air.
http://licensing.digium.com/view.php?id=13


And whether or not they would stand up in court do you want to pay the
legal costs to 'win' ?  Not to mention the time not working on real
stuff because you are in court.

-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
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http://www.trxtel.com the VoIP provider that pays you!
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