[asterisk-users] Zaptel project being renamed to DAHDI

[Russell Bryant]

On May 29, 2008, at 8:00 PM, Andrew Joakimsen wrote:

> I am wondering two things:
>
> 1) What are the implications, trademark-wise, for 3rd party hardware
> vendors? Will Digium crack down on the use of DAHDI name? Will some be
> forced to call it the "Prominent North American Opensource Telephony
> Vendor's Hardware Device Interface?" (PNAOTVHDI)

The trademark policy for DAHDI is the exact same as it is for Asterisk  
and other trademarks owned by Digium.  For more details, see the  
official trademark policy:

http://www.digium.com/en/company/view-policy.php?id=Trademark-Policy

>
> 2) In the article you posted you reference more than just a simple
> name change. How will this affect the use of 3rd party cards, e.g.
> Sangoma. Is Digium committed to keeping DAHDI as open as Zaptel,
> making it easy for 3rd party vendors to piggy-back their drivers onto
> the architecture? Is digium trying to make these cards obsolete in
> Asterisk 1.6?


We are not doing _anything_ that will prohibit other hardware vendors  
for making compatible drivers.  For anyone that has drivers that work  
with zaptel, changing them to work with DAHDI is as simple as doing a  
search and replace in the code.  We are changing things in the least  
amount possible for the most part.  The additional changes being made  
don't affect the interfaces.  Those changes are:

1) removing some extremely old digium hardware drivers that nobody uses

2) splitting up the code to distribute the kernel drivers separately  
from the user space utilities, for easier packaging and distribution

3) removing some backwards compatibility stuff that was there for user  
space applications compiled against older versions of zaptel.  These  
aren't needed as there are no older versions of DAHDI.


If you have any more questions, feel free to ask, and I will do my  
best to clear up any confusion.

--
Russell Bryant
Senior Software Engineer
Open Source Team Lead
Digium, Inc.