[Asterisk-Users] Free Software or not -- that's the question /* New subject */

[Olle E. Johansson]

It's very hard to find a business model for working with Open Source Software in a for-profit
software company.

Mysql and Digium are success stories that work with a two-fold model that seems to work. Do not forget
that there are companies out there that wants to buy the software with a more business-minded license
than GPL and can't use the software with GPL license. As long as Digium continues to enhance
and give away code, I see no problem with letting them use my code. And as Tilghman will
point out if I don't do it, I can still have the copyright to my code, just let them use it
in their business. It's a form of coop-operation ;-)

If Digium seriously misbehave and start releasing lots of functionality on the side and not giving
new releases to the community, well then we might have to consider where the community want to go.
We're far away from that situation.

I think it's time to calm down and move forward, use the time to make sure we can relase
a stable 1.0 soon.

To do that, we need help debugging and testing all the patches in bugs.digium.com. Bug marshals
are working with the process, but we need many more people testing and reporting their findings,
good or bad, in bugs.digium.com

Thank you for helping us with this.

/O