[Asterisk-Users] SysMaster and GPL Violation (lets think before we

[Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists]

Hi again,

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 13:06:06 -0600 (CST), Joe Greco <jgreco at ns.sol.net> wrote:

> In this industry?  Lots.  Let's start with linking it to a non-GPL-
> compatible codec, move on to linking it with a propietary configuration
> and management system, and end up at creatively finding a reason to fund
> the development of an open source software project while simultaneously
> obtaining a licensing model for your company that doesn't make lawyers
> cringe.
> 
> That's three good reasons that have nothing to do with it, and I didn't
> even think much about it.  There are plenty of reasonable reasons that one
> might do it.

I can give you another reason: Getting past type approval in certain
countries where type approval bodies are -shall we say- rather
conservative.

Here in Japan, we have JATE, which is the equivalent of the FCC in the
US, but it is not a government agency. It is an industry association
with government blessing.

If we want to get approval for the Tormenta card that approval would
have to include the Zaptel drivers. Now, there is nothing that
explicitly says you cannot get approval for open source driver
software, but since the card is only $500 and the software is free
while the Japanese vendors who are the members of JATE sell their
single port J1 gateways for $50.000, you can imagine that JATE will
try to find whatever reason they can come up with to deny approval.

And since they are not a government agency, you don't have any right
to appeal either if you feel they turned you down for no good reason.
In fact they don't have to give you any reason, they can just say
"No". You will then have to reapply and pay the fees associated with
that. Do that for a few years and you will finally get your approval
while the Japanese vendors (and JATE members) have had plenty of time
to figure out how they will deal with you as a new competitor.

So, if you use open source drivers, you give those guys an excellent
reason to turn down your application. "What if somebody orders the
vanilla T1 card in the US and downloads a new yet unapproved version
of the J1 driver?" they will say. The rules for approval are that the
applicant must not facilitate connecting unapproved equipment to the
Japanese PSTN.

Consequently, I asked Greg Vance many many many times what he thinks
about working together in one of a number of possible ways ...

- create a J1 branch of the Zaptel and Libpri sources, then take that
Japanese branch closed source, then sell it
- license the Zaptel and Libpri sources to us, so we can do the above
- make a J1 version of the T1 cards so that only the J1 card will work
with the Japanese driver software but not any other card

Greg has never even replied.

I got Mark interested from time to time, but his views on the whole
lot are -shall we say- "romantic" and smack of US imperialism,
considering Japan conquered territory that will just have to accept US
policies. Yet, Japan is not Guam and such an attitude is guaranteed to
get you nowhere over here. For the avoidance of doubt, I don't like
the Japanese isolationsm either, in fact I hate it and often I feel
the urge to just smack them, but if you want to do business over here,
you have to realise that you don't make the rules and have to deal
with the situation as it is, not as you would like it to be.

The closest I ever got to a response from Greg was a passed on comment
over the phone when I was talking to somebody else who said that Greg
said "yes, we need to talk about this some day". I have been trying to
find out when that "some day" might be for over a year now.

So, for the most part I have pretty much given up on Digium as a
hardware vendor. The only hardware product of theirs that makes sense
to us now it the IAXy.

Instead, I have now partnered with Sangoma and they brought their
drivers to Linux and Asterisk already. We are going to test J1 shortly
and they are committed to do whatever it takes to support J1 and
satisfy JATE. Too bad for Digium if they lose the Japanese market to
Sangoma as a result of all this.

I agree that a small company like Digium must remain focussed and
cannot be all over the place. My company is even smaller than Digium,
so I know this all too well. Yet, I don't understand why they wouldn't
respond to a request to license parts of Asterisk for the purpose of
getting past type approval in a market as significant as Japan.

In this respect, I am rather surprised by the revelations of this
thread, in particlular that indeed there seem to be companies who
managed to obtain a license from Digium. I had assumed that Digium was
merely reserving the right to license simply because they wanted to be
able to sell out to a big name, like Cisco or Nortel or IBM when the
time comes. I am really surprised to see that they are actually
licensing Asterisk.

Maybe it is because we're not in the US or because I only asked about
Zaptel and Libpri, not Asterisk, but then again, given the level of
prices on J1 gateway hardware in Japan, the fees one could charge for
a J1 Zaptel driver will likely be multiple times what one could charge
for a license for all of Asterisk in the US. Ironic, isn't it?!

Anyway, having dealt with all this for some time now (including trying
to get Digium's analog stuff working reliably over here) I have to
say, I am encouraged by your comments and some of the non-hostile
responses, because it looks to me that there is potential for a fork.

All it takes is a corporate sponsor who believes that Asterisk as an
add-on would help their products to sell better, for example Novell,
IBM, Apple. If such a corporate sponsor could be found, a fork of
Asterisk would then be truly GPL and contributors would then have the
choice to which fork they want to contribute. If the market then
decides to gravitate around Digium, so be it, if it decides to
gravitate around the GPL only project, so be it.

I pesonally don't even have a problem to grant Digium the right to use
my contributions (so far GUI front ends and standalone utilities on
MacOSX) for their efforts to license under non-GPL terms.

However, I did not sign the disclaimers because it also asks for any
future rights. That's really stupid. If you were to invite me to a pub
and offer to buy me a pint of Guinness, then would it not be
unreasonable of me if I said, "I accept, but only on the condition
that you will pay for all beers in the future, too."

I am glad to see that others have similar concerns and I hope that
Digium will get rid of this requirement and offer a disclaimer that is
on a "only this time and only this contribution - future efforts
explicitly excluded" basis. Failing that, I hope for a corporate
sponsored code fork.

regards
benjamin
-- 
Sunrise Telephone Systems, 9F Shibuya Daikyo Bldg., 1-13-5 Shibuya,
Tokyo, Japan.

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