[asterisk-biz] Open letter to digium, asterisk developers and consultants

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 17:14 -0400, Matthew Rubenstein wrote:
> 	I'm not sure that a trademark on "Asterisk" prevents anyone else from
> saying their product "works with Asterisk", or "is compatible with
> Asterisk". The trademark prevents anyone else from calling their own SW
> PBX by the name "Asterisk", to prevent consumers in the market confusing
> the new product with Digium's. But if the other product is in fact
> compatible with Asterisk, as advertised, or otherwise is related to
> Asterisk, but is not marketed confusingly *to be Asterisk*, trademark
> doesn't prohibit using the word descriptively. Digium has no control
> over that.
> 

you would think but that is not what digium claims on their webpage for
the usage of the word "Asterisk".  Further if you change the name to
something else, something allowed under the GPL you lose the linking
exceptions making the software broken.  The name change is required if
its not "Genuine Digium Software" per their policy if you change
anything, add a patch, a module, or take away modules for reasons other
than portability.

It is this that I am requesting a change in, the claim that you cannot
exercise the rights granted by the GPL by way of the trademark and
license exception trickery.

> I don't know whether trademark prohibits that use of "Asterisk" or not.

Digium lawyers claim to know, and claim on their trademark policy that
it does prohibit the use of that word.


> Because "a fork" means "is not the same as the original", but in a way
> that means "better than the original" (as it is used).

If that were true then it would seem dispariging to Digium, a banned
activity by their policy.  Technically this also removes the ability to
publish test results that do not put asterisk as the top of the list.


> 	However, I'm pretty sure that this has been resolved in the courts.
> Even though it's HW, not SW, the "100% IBM Compatible" PC clone
> marketing in the 1980s comes to mind.

Then it should not be a problem for Digium to comply with these
requests.  All I am asking for is no restriction on the GPL rights
granted, along with the ability to "advertise" works based on those
rights (ie having a webpage describe what it is).

-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
Belfast +44 28 9099 6461        US +1 516 687 5200
http://www.trxtel.com the phone company that pays you!