[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk "dual licensing"

[James Taylor]

On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:59:35 -0700, Kevin P. Fleming  
<kpfleming at starnetworks.us> wrote:

> Brian Capouch wrote:
>
>> I would like to see you say out loud, just once, that those of us who  
>> know all of that and disclaim our work to Digium are not necessarily  
>> idiotic boobs who don't know what we're doing.
>
> As Joe already pointed out, he doesn't believe this to be the case :-)
>
> However, this thread brings to mind a side-issue that I've been bothered  
> about: I have improvements in my local Asterisk tree that I _cannot_ get  
> merged into the main Asterisk tree, no matter how  
> wonderful/exciting/magical they are, because they are based on code  
> written by others, released under the GPL, and those authors will not  
> agree to give Digium an unrestricted license to their code.
>
> This is a big concern to me, for two reasons:
>
> First is that it can (and will) stifle Asterisk development to some  
> degree, because interested parties cannot just grab "best of breed" code  
> that they find out there in the wild (licensed under the GPL) and  
> incorporate it into Asterisk. This means that developers must implement  
> _from scratch_ equivalent code if they want it to get into Digium's  
> Asterisk tree.
>
> Second is that even if a developer implements the code _from scratch_,  
> if they have seen the original code distributed under the GPL, and their  
> re-implementation ends up being very similar to the original, they  
> cannot legally contribute that code under the terms of Digium's  
> disclaimer, because there is some doubt as to whether they have complete  
> rights over what that they are contributing. Certainly Digium is  
> protected, because the disclaimer absolves them of the burden of proving  
> whether any contributed code is actually being legally contributed or  
> not, but the contributor exposes themselves to possible actions, and it  
> could harm the Asterisk name/brand/reputation if such code was later  
> found to have been improperly contributed. This issue as recently dealt  
> with in the Linux kernel community, but there is less of an issue there  
> because contributions are pure GPL, there is no dual licensing model  
> available.
>
> In summary, it bothers me that contributions to Digium's Asterisk tree  
> must be "clean room" implementations, without reference to existing  
> alternatively-licensed implementations, unless those reference  
> implementations can be re-licensed under Digium's terms. Please  
> understand that I too am very happy that Digium exists, has provided  
> Asterisk to the community, and I'm happy to help them earn an income and  
> continue supporting/extending Asterisk. What I'm concerned about is that  
> Asterisk will not be able to grow as well as it could if these license  
> restrictions were not in place, and since some of us (myself included)  
> are basing business enterprises around Asterisk, I want to see the  
> product be able to do everything it is capable of, in the best way  
> possible, not only the ways that are possible via clean-room  
> implementation.
>
> Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, don't play one on TV, nor have I  
> discussed these issues with one. I do, however, have a very good  
> understanding of the GPL and Digium's long-form disclaimer (or at last I  
> think I do <G>), and I have discussed these issues with others who I  
> have reason to believe also understand the relevant documents.
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Brian,
Keep this thread.
It will make excellent material for Philosophy 320 - Logic and Critical  
Reasoning, Evaluating Arguments.
James Taylor

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