[asterisk-biz] 2008 Predictions

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Thu, 2008-01-03 at 12:52 -0800, C. Savinovich wrote:
> >>>Digium's value is ownership of the copyright on Asterisk code.
> 
> Yes Alex, but why will anybody pay top money for that code, if it can be
> written again by other people? (albeit with effort)
> 
> Code is not a unique item.
>  
but the ability to sell it as a closed source project is.  There is only
one entity that can do that, and its name is digium.  So its not the
copyright per se, but rather the license that they have the option on,
and the ability to sell that.

The trademarks are another thing, per the trademark policy any
additional modules, removal of modules (except for porting reasons), bug
fixes, etc that are not 'official' also requires a change in the product
name.  

Most consumers do not want to compile code, they want a box they can
just plug in and have it do XYZ.  The ability to have a closed license
means that companies could have custom non-open source features added
without a potential licensing conflict (although there are trivial ways
around the restrictions the gpl places on developers).  This results in
a license fee for each unit sold to be levied.

While a company could take the gpl version, they would be required to at
least give out the asterisk code, even if they have closed source stuff
in addition via one of the many methods of avoiding the gpl.  This is
something many companies dont want to do.
-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
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