[Asterisk-Users] Business Edition

[Kevin Walsh]

Andrew Kohlsmith [akohlsmith-asterisk at benshaw.com] wrote:
> I dunno... people seem all up in arms about this but honestly I fail to
> see the problem.  Digium is doing what they can to make money and provide
> services while keeping Asterisk as free and openly developed as possible.
>
Services could be provided, and money could be made, without resorting
to selling closed source versions of the product.  Apparently, the
closed version consists of the contents of CVS HEAD, with various
changes made to "increase reliability and decrease risk" - according to
the FAQ.  It would be nice if the binary version's source was available
as a branch in CVS, but that probably doesn't fit into a closed source
business model very comfortably.

I suspect that there is now less of an incentive to produce stable
branches, and backport fixes to those branches from the development
version, as this could possibly reduce the value of the closed version
somewhat.  It could turn out that we eventually find the project in a
permanent "in development" state, with no stable releases at all - just
the CVS HEAD.  Once you start down that road, and rely upon revenue
generated from closed source products, it's difficult to turn back.

>
> I have (small amounts of) code contributed to Asterisk and I am working on
> more.  Digium and Asterisk have given me a lot of newfound freedom and
> flexibility and power in my phone system.  I appreciate that, and I don't
> feel that this dual-licensing or granting of a nonexclusive perpetual
> license to the bits and pieces of my code is too much to ask.  My bits
> and pieces would be worthless without the bits and pieces and chunks and
> slabs of code that others have provided, and it'd all be useless without
> the framework that Digium came out with. 
> 
Asterisk would not be the product it is without the efforts of the
community who, it seems, have provided the majority of the source
code and support for the project.  Of course, Digium try their best
to not accept patches to "their" code unless they are accompanied with
a "disclaimer".

According to the bug tracker (http://bugs.digium.com/main_page.php),
the "disclaimers" are insisted upon "in order to keep copyright clean,"
even though it has been pointed out, several times, that the agreements
have no effect on copyright at all.  The "disclaimers" exist to grant
Digium the right to close and sell your code.  If you're happy with that
then that's your choice to make.

>
> If you don't want or don't like ABE, don't use it.  Nobody is cramming it
> down your throat. 
> 
That's not the point.

-- 
   _/   _/  _/_/_/_/  _/    _/  _/_/_/  _/    _/
  _/_/_/   _/_/      _/    _/    _/    _/_/  _/   K e v i n   W a l s h
 _/ _/    _/          _/ _/     _/    _/  _/_/    kevin at cursor.biz
_/   _/  _/_/_/_/      _/    _/_/_/  _/    _/