[Asterisk-Users] Open G.729A codec

[Matthew Hardeman]

Another approach would be...

Just modify the mod_g729b.so such that the licensing constraints aren't
so problematic...

A little bird said it shouldn't be hard to do so...

Matt Hardeman
PaperSoft


-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Jan Rychter
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 12:08 PM
To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Open G.729A codec

>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Underwood <steveu at coppice.org>:
 Steve> Kim C. Callis wrote:
 >> I was reading on www.vovida.org/applications/downloads/G729A/ (home
 >> of VOCAL) pages, and that there is a free license use for
 >> non-commercial for G.729A. Is that usable under Asterisk or strictly
 >> a Vovida offering?
 >>
 Steve> This was a publicity stunt by VoiceAge, which Cisco/Vovida
 Steve> seemed to get dragged into in their determination to see G.729
 Steve> become more widely used. All that ever really happened was a
 Steve> Windows binary was made available for very restricted use. 

This Windows binary is probably fairly easy to convert for someone with
sufficient skills. It's a simple library, COFF format. It's probably
sufficient to split it into .o files (using ar), then convert the .o
files (using objcopy --target=elf32-i386, objcopy from cygwin has both
elf32 and coff formats, so it's useful for that), and assemble the
resulting elf32 .a library (again, using ar). What remains to be taken
care of are mostly underscores in function/variable names.

Otherwise, this process should work and one should be able to create a
working Linux library (along with an asterisk codec).

Just remember that this is for non-commercial, personal usage only, as
the license clearly states. Also, one must not reverse-engineer the
code, which the license prohibits.

I was actually thinking about both buying a license for it and doing the
above, to avoid the licensing monstrosity present in the G.729A codec
resold by Digium. Then I gave it some thought and couldn't really find a
reason to do so much work on non-free code while there was speex almost
ready to be used.

I think it is rather sad (not to say ridiculous) for a company to guard
a piece of code this small with such monstrous licensing schemes.

 Steve> The G.729 implementation Digium supplies for Linux in from the
 Steve> same source. The licencing is so clunky I bet Mark is wishing he
 Steve> had left it alone!

Couldn't agree more. The G.729 codec is so unDigium-like... don't buy
it is my recommendation.

--J.