[asterisk-dev] readline support in asterisk

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Thu, Aug 17, 2006 at 06:57:47PM +0200, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
> >>While I realize that readline support is not getting into asterisk
> >>any time soon...
> >
> >What do you mean, not anytime soon?  It was ALREADY in Asterisk
> >previously and was removed due to licensing concerns.  The current
> >editline code is in there intentionally, because it is more freely
> >licensed than readline.
> 
> Interesting
> Fetched from http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+GPL+Compliance
> 
> "Asterisk ships with Editline, a NetBSD library statically linked  
> into the asterisk binary. This library is released under the 4 clause  
> license that NetBSD uses to this day which is incompatible with the  
> GPL. In order to resolve the licensing conflict Editline must be  
> replaced. Without resolving this conflict, the GPL license of the  
> Asterisk distribution is technically invalidated which means nobody  
> has the right to use, modify nor distribute Asterisk with the  
> exception of Asterisk Business Edition customers (commercially  
> licensed).
> 
> However, the GPL license is not invalidated on those files which do  
> not touch Editline which means it is possible to replace Editline  
> with a library that is licensed under a GPL compatible license such  
> as GNU Readline, and thereby get an Asterisk package for which the  
> GPL license applies. In other words is not necessary to wait for  
> Digium to fix this issue, it can be done by anyone with the skill to  
> replace the offending library."

Sorry to wake up such an old thread. I just want to add another peice of
information:

The version shipped with Asterisk (and the "libeditline" package in
Debian) is indeed the old NetBSD editline package. However a newer
version of that package ("libedit" in Debian) is availble under a
modified BSD license. Asterisk cleanly builds with the new one. So there
is no inherent reason for a problem here.

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen       
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