[Asterisk-Users] Re: Digium Website Update: Asterisk Business Edition

[Aidan Van Dyk]

* Andrew Kohlsmith <akohlsmith-asterisk at benshaw.com> [050529 21:07]:
> On Sunday 29 May 2005 20:59, Aidan Van Dyk wrote:
> > 1) Simply CVS head (as of some point in time) with certain features or
> >    bug fixes "backed out"
> >
> > 2) In addition to CVS head, some important features and bug fixes.
> 
> I think it's simply #2.  They are taking HEAD and maintaining a version where 
> they are extraordinarily careful about what goes in.  Similar to what 
> "stable" was supposed to be.  

Well, I disagree on the "stable" comment here - but that's neither here
nor there.

If they are "fixing" things in ABE that are broken in "Open Source", and
not simply backing out features, they why aren't these bug fixes in the
open source version?  

If they are only "backing out" features to be more conservative, then
that would quite OK, but the truth is, they haven't really been up front
with what they are doing.  But part of the point of the GPL is that
these things are "open".  But Digium doesn't have to comply with the GPL
for stuff properly disclaimed, so they are allowed to do that.

I've just not been impressed with Digium's behaviour lately.  They've
gotten quite hostile over Sangoma hardware lately, claiming that Sangoma
(by continuing to develop, refine, and expand their hardware lines,
which are much older than asterisk, and which asterisk was originally
developed on) are just ripping them off.  If anything, Digium is ripping
people off with hardware which is inferior (though I've seen claims that
they have some good new stuff coming - excellent!).

And now they introduce a product that *directly* competes with the
people in the "asterisk community" (is that Digium speak for free
coders?) who are working on developing, using, and selling
asterisk-based solutions.  What incentive does some non-Digium
person/developer/company now have to make sure their stuff is disclaimed
to Digium, if they know that doing so will give Digium a leg up on them
in trying to sell it?  

And for all the claims we've heard that there is no "other version" of
asterisk, we know know that Digium does, indeed, have such a version,
which, though based on the available open-source code, is different, and
that the differences are unknown, and that they are selling it as direct
competition to the others contributing to Asterisk.

In all, we've seen Digium going to great lengths to try and build an
asterisk community to enhance asterisk, but is treating them as a group
of indentured users, testers, coders.

a.

-- 
Aidan Van Dyk                                             Create like a god,
aidan at highrise.ca                                       command like a king,
http://www.highrise.ca/                                   work like a slave.
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