[Asterisk-Dev] asterisk 1.2 g729 compile errors

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Daniel Pocock wrote:

> I am not a lawyer, but I believe I can safely say that there is no such
> thing as source code that infringes on a patent.  It is the use of the
> code that infringes the patent, not the code itself.  I don't see how
> Digium can possibly be worried about `contributory infringement',
> because after all, don't they still have a legitimate license agreement
> for G.729?

Patents are not the issue here, at all.

The issue is that these 'alternative' G.729 codecs for Asterisk involve
the usage of code that is _not_ licensed for commercial use, nor do the
recipients of the code have the right to redistribute it in any form at
all (source or binary). In fact, the sources of that code specifically
restrict its use to academic and research purposes (since it is a
'reference implementation' to be used for comparison and
interoperability testing with your own code).

If we allow discussion of this to continue on our lists, it could be
claimed by the licensors of this code that we are not taking any steps
to stop our user community from continuing to infringe the license
terms; yes, that is a stretch, but there is no reason for us (or anyone
else in the community) to be exposed to it.