[Asterisk-Dev] voicemail message number limits

[Sunrise Ltd]

dking at pimpsoft.com wrote:

>> The reality of the telecommunications industry is that
>> this is an industry that has not had Open Source
>> alternatives for a particularly long time and as such
>> there are portions (such as G.729) required for
practical
>> use in certain applications that are not Open Source.
>> Digium simply cannot allow its ability to make such
>> decisions about Asterisk to be hindered by external
>> obligations.
>
> After all it would hurt Digium's business model;
> If Digium really cared about the open source community
> you would not be hindered by the globs of dependencies
> you use and would simply either buy out the licenses for
> the software that is not free and gpl it or start
software
> projects that are open source to supply what you need,

That's formidable nonsense

G.729 is patented. You cannot write your own G.729 codec
and GPL it. THE GPL EXPLICITLY FORBIDS THAT.

So, the only alternative is to omit G.729 support
altogether and thereby seal that Asterisk will not be able
to support it until the patent runs out. That's not a
reasonable decision to make. Nor would it be in the
interest of the Asterisk community.

A similar story with Dialogic support, even if there are
no patents. And then if we don't have Dialogic support,
you will probably the first to complain that Asterisk is
only a means to support Digium hardware, that it doesn't
support other vendors hardware, especially that support
for such mainstream hardware as Dialogic is missing and
that Digium was doing it on purpose.

Only a religious fanatic could come up with the
suggestions you made. Maybe you want to try alt.religion
or alt.conspiracy on Usenet. I am sure you will get plenty
of likeminded feedback to your ideas there.

In the real world however most people agree that open
source will have to coexist with proprietary stuff. Like
it or not.


> I have made several points so far on what your doing
> and people have chimed in and either agreed or
disagreed,
> but they have all said the same thing in regards to what
your
> doing and I believe that is wrong; Your violating the
GPL;

You are confusing legality with ethics here. You say that
Digium is acting illegally, but what you really mean is
that in your view their practises are unethical. However,
that is a matter of opinion.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion but not
everybody will share your view of what is ethical and what
is not.


> I know about this because I myself created/designed
> a software work and then had it stolen source code
> and all from me by a company who was legally able
> to deny my claims despite the fact it was copyright
> by me and it was opensource; If I was not able to be
> selective then your are able to be selective now.

Ah, now we finally get to know what your true agenda is.
Bitterness! Well, I am afraid to say so, but a mailing
list is not the right place to seek assistance in such a
matter. You should better get professional help or join
one of those self help groups. Again, here is not the
place!

> Your breaking the law and your violating the GPL in the
> current way your doing this; The asterisk project as
being
> maintained illegally.

Have you even asked for any professional legal advice
before making such claims? Quite obviously not, because if
you did, you would have been advised to shut up because
you are likely be breaking libel laws with statements like
that.

Then again, if you are so convinced of the claims you are
making, why don't you mount a legal challenge? We shall
see you get humiliated at groklaw just like SCO.


Last but not least, as you were saying somewhere that "no
doubt" Digium will take Asterisk closed source. That's
another one of those conspiracy theory award of the year
candidates. Now let's assume that Digium did indeed walk
out of the open source Asterisk project. Sure they can do
that if they wanted to. But that wouldn't mean the end
Asterisk as an open source project.

The worst that could happen to the project is that the
name would have to be changed because Asterisk is a
trademark of Digium AFAIK. The code that has already been
released under GPL would remain and the community would
still be there to look after it and to continue the
project. Likely some other sponsor would step in.

The Asterisk community is probably one of the most active
open source communities there are. There is no doubt in my
mind that we would keep going even without Digium, which
is not in anyway meant to diminish Digium's contribution.
To the contrary, Digium deserves acknowledgement not only
for their development work, but also for the
accomplishment to have built such a strong community
around Asterisk. Many large companies have released their
code as open source and keep pouring money at it, but they
have failed to build a community around the project.

If Digium was taking advantage of the community without
there being any balance as you suggest, then they would
have never been able to build that community in the first
place. This alone shows that there is something very wrong
with your argument.

regards
benjamin


--
Sunrise Telephone Systems Ltd
9F Shibuya Daikyo Bldg., 1-13-5 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan

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