[Asterisk-Users] Do you need a licence to connect a Ciscohardphone to Asterisk ?

[Rich Adamson]

Florian Overkamp wrote:
> Michiel van Baak wrote:
>> If you buy a model without the "spare" in it's name, you
>> have the license to use them right ?
> 
> To use them with a CCM or CCME, yes :-)
> 
>> How about secondhand phones you get from ebay ?
>> Is my cisco smartnet account enough to run the phone legally
>> ? It's not a spare model (at least that was not in the deal
>> description)
> 
> My understanding is, if you have any license at all, Cisco will probably 
> not bother you. But it is most definitely not the way they intended :-)

The bottom line are the words in the Cisco license agreement that 
essentially says none of their firmware licenses are transferable. A 
purchase from Ebay would be an attempt to transfer the license and 
therefore illegal.

There are some Cisco authorized resellers around that do sell used (or 
in Cisco terms, reconditioned) phones. Some apparently have the 
capability to bundle smartnet contracts with the phones, but they are 
not living up to the actual words in the license.

The flip side of this... how many people would it take for Cisco to 
inventory and enforce their written licenses throughout the world?

Another side issue... the Cisco phones have no way to "remove" the 
installed firmware. Therefore, there is no way to legally sell a used 
Cisco phone, period.