[asterisk-users] Is Asterisk really good?? (added, What is ViciDial??)

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 02:47:12PM -0400, Matt Florell wrote:
> On 4/14/08, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 01:54:22PM -0400, Matt Florell wrote:
> >  > With VICIDIAL you can do inbound/outbound/blended call handling and
> >  > there are all sorts of features for call handling and agent functions.
> >  > The latest VICIDIAL release is GPLv2, but for future major releases we
> >  > are moving to the AGPLv2. VICIDIAL is free as in cost and speech.
> >
> > I noticed you had gone Affero.  Could you expand on that decision, if
> >  you have a moment?  What's the difference between the two licenses, did
> >  you consider GPLv3, and what's your situation on contributed code?
> 
> We finally decided we would be going to AGPLv2 for our next major
> release due to a few hosted service providers out there that were
> altering the code to VICIDIAL, offering "VICIDIAL hosted" and not
> contributing their changes back to the project. And under the GPL they
> have every right to do this as long as the code is not installed on a
> client-owned machine or transferred to a client. This is known as the
> GPL-ASP-loophole. AGPL just closes that loophole and says that any
> customer of a hosted service like that has the right to the source
> code too.

Ok; that's what I *thought* Affero's change was, but it's kind of hard
to tell from the actual license...

> We have not done enough research on GPLv3 yet to want to move to it,
> and a lot of other GPLv2 projects are staying put as well for the time
> being.

I'm not really fond of it myself.

> As for contributed code, we require a statement of "this is my code
> and the project can use it and redistribute it" from the author.
> Nothing very detailed at the moment because there are not many code
> contributors and the project is entirely GPL-based and is not
> dual-licensed.

Yeah; I was just worried about someone getting pissy about your
relicensing from GPL to AGPL.  Not that I expect it or anything... :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra at baylink.com
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