[Asterisk-Users] Open G.729A codec

[Jan Rychter]

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Spencer <markster at digium.com>:
 >> 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.

 Mark> It's a little more complex than that.  Remember the Windows one
 Mark> is single-channel only.  It's not reentrant and thus totally
 Mark> useless for Asterisk unless you only need one channel.

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

 Mark> Which could not be distributed without violating GPL, nevermind
 Mark> Voicages licenses. 
[...]

 >> 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.

 Mark> A requirement which you cannot apply to GPL'd code (unless you
 Mark> were the copyright holder as Digium is and thus able to make such
 Mark> exceptions).

You are of course correct. I wasn't encouraging anyone to break
licenses: what I was talking about was exactly single-channel personal
use, no redistribution. Which just happened to be what I needed a while
ago :-)

 >> 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.

 Mark> Speex is really a great thing, but G.729 is the unfortunate
 Mark> standard for communicating with most (proprietary) SIP/H323
 Mark> devices.  If ATA 186's could talk SpeeX this wouldn't be a
 Mark> problem.  Trying to get the Windows G.729 code ported to run with
 Mark> Asterisk is definitely barking up the wrong tree though, for both
 Mark> technical and legal reasons.

BTW, I hope Speex support in Asterisk will get better. I still have some
problems using it (the first several seconds of a call sound
particularly bad). I did file a bug report and I'm waiting patiently.


[...]

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

 Mark> I don't think anybody buys G.729 just to have it.  They buy it
 Mark> because they *have* to have it.  And we sell it because they
 Mark> *have* to have it.  I think eventually we'll be able to come up
 Mark> with a better (but not, for the near future, open) G.729 solution
 Mark> from us.

I made a mistake of buying it so that I can have a low-bandwidth
well-tested codec for use on an IAX2 link. Then I've caused Digium lots
of unwanted trouble, because hair stood on the back of my neck after
reading the licensing agreement and seeing the .so library. Let's hope
it gets better in the future!

--J.
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