[Asterisk-Dev] Questions

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Brian K. West wrote:
> If I read this right this is ABE only and locks anyone wanting to use
> Asterisk with Dialogic cards would have to buy an ABE license.  This also
> takes away the freedom of being able to really make a flexible solution
> based on Asterisk because you don't get the source code that ABE is compiled
> with thus you're stuck.

This does not 'take away' any freedom at all.

The fact is that the libraries used as part of the Intel/Dialogic Global 
Call API are NOT licensed in a way that makes them compatible with GPL 
software. As such, there cannot exist a channel driver for GPL Asterisk 
that connects to those libraries, unless Intel chose to change the 
license of those libraries. That is their decision, not ours, yours, or 
anyone else's to make.

Even before this latest driver was released, Digium had a Dialogic 
driver available for purchase, but it could only be used with 
commercially licensed Asterisk systems, and very few users ever 
purchased it. Now that commercially-licensed Asterisk has become 
available under much simpler licensing terms (ABE), Intel has chosen to 
leverage that and make a channel driver available to those users. The 
other option for them would have been to do nothing and leave all 
Asterisk users unable to use Intel/Dialogic hardware.

As far as I can tell, this takes away _no_ freedom at all 'to make a 
flexible solution', as you can easily connect an ABE system to a GPL 
Asterisk system (using IAX2 or whatever other means you wish) and have 
the best of both worlds.