[Asterisk-doc] You ASKED for an Asterisk book, you GOT an Asterisk book!

[Leif Madsen]

On 10/15/05, Ronald Wiplinger <ronald at elmit.com> wrote:
> Does it has a copyright? May it distributed via Internet that way?
> Asterisk is still under development. Which Asterisk version is it good for?

Yes, the copyright lies with O'Reilly Media.

It may be distributed onthe Internet, as long as you follow the terms
from the license. Here is a summary of the license we chose to release
the book under:

(available in full from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/)

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0

You are free:

   * to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work

Under the following conditions:
  Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by
the author or licensor.
  Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
  No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

   * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the
license terms of this work.
   * Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from
the copyright holder.

Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.

Let me explain the reasons briefly the Noncommercial and No Derivitive
Works portions. The reason for the restrictions for the Noncommercial
is obviously because we don't want people distributing the book along
with a product they are selling/creating and saying they have included
documentation. And of course because O'Reilly wants to sell books (and
so do the authors of course so that we may continue to create
documentation -- although this is a lesser fact for us, we are
certainly not getting rich from this, it was a labour of love and for
the community).

The No Derivitive Works forbids the changing of the document and
distributing it, which includes translations. This is because O'Reilly
would like to have the first opportunity at having the works
translated for distribution to their various centre's and such, which
we felt was a fair request.


Yes, Asterisk is constantly under development; its a moving target.
However, since the new upcoming version 1.2.x of Asterisk is such a
strong improvement over the 1.0.x series of book, then we decided it
was in the best interest of everyone (for O'Reilly in terms of sales,
for the community so they have solid documentation for the newest
upcoming version, and for us so we wouldn't get flamed :))

Since 1.2 has not yet been released, there may be some slight
differences, however, most should be minimal as many of the major
functionalities have already been addressed while we were writing the
book (we worked very closely with the developers in the community to
be sure that we were as accurate as possible). Many of the changes
that are currently going into the tree involve stabalizing and
streamlining the code.

So to answer your question, the book is written for the current CVS
HEAD and upcoming 1.2.x. version of Asterisk.

Thanks!

--
Leif Madsen - http://www.leifmadsen.com
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/asterisk