[asterisk-users] Asterisk 3rd party developed commercial software sales licensing platform

Sat Feb 7 08:42:56 CST 2009

I think it's time to 'ping' John Todd and Digium on this topic again.

What happened Digium?

Why did you say you were going to take this project on but have not come
back to the community with an answer yet?

Regards,

Dean Collins
Cognation Inc
dean at cognation.net
<mailto:dean at cognation.net> +1-212-203-4357   New York
+61-2-9016-5642   (Sydney in-dial).
+44-20-3129-6001 (London in-dial).

________________________________

	From: Dean Collins 
	Sent: Sunday, 4 May 2008 3:45 PM
	Subject: Asterisk 3rd party developed commercial software sales
licensing platform

	Hi Randy,

	As discussed on Friday the 9th of May I would like to host the
Voip Users Conference Call.

	The purpose of this call is to discuss the community's feelings
about an Asterisk 3rd party developed commercial software sales
licensing platform.

	The plan is that some form of documented published schema be
implemented that will allow for 3rd party software developers to sell
their software applications using a common licensing model similar to
the way G729 licenses are sold by Digium. 

	Basically this discussion came about for a 3rd party ecosystem
question a few weeks ago when Cory Andrews from VoIP supply was on the
Voip-Users conference call.

	I asked the question - how much of VoIP Supply revenue is
product hardware versus applications - he said we don't sell any
services such as ITSP hosted Asterisk so I replied that wasn't what I
was thinking of and gave the example of Snap Dialer which is a low cost
(I paid $20 for it) application which allows me to dial names from
Outlook.

	He said they didn't sell any applications like this at all but
would consider selling them if this was an opportunity presented to him.

	I then talked about some of the consulting I did for
Salesforce.com and how they have built an entire ecosystem of third
party applications all built by other people apart from salesforce.com
but utilizing the documented API's and application security /licensing
etc.

	My comments were that although Asterisk should always remain a
free open source application that developers need to eat and pay rent as
well.

	If there was some common marketplace that developers could sell
small - low cost third party applications to the Asterisk community that
Digium had some type of overview/management control over who listed etc
that this would deliver a stream of revenue that would encourage further
application development.

	The question I then posed to the group was if anyone knew how
Digium managed the sale and licensing of the G729 codes.
	And if this was an open published standard that could it be used
as the basis for the Asterisk ecosystem license model.

	Now I know it's not perfect and can be hacked but everything can
be hacked. The idea is to build apps cheap enough that it's not worth
the effort of hacking. If anyone has some alternative suggestions on how
apps should be licensed we'd like to hear them this Friday.

	I know there were discussions in the early days of the Mexuar
launch about how they could license a single channel of the Mexuar
Corraleta application rather than the entire server license for $2000.
The issue always came down to how we could license it to 1/ a single
channel license. 2/ tied to a single machine and not transferable
(currently the Mexuar license is hard coded in the application to the
servers IP address).

	I know for me personally although I have donated to numerous
bounty requests (I even tried to get one developed for video
conferencing a few years ago that was around the $10,000 range) I
haven't seen the ongoing continual development that would benefit the
Asterisk community.

	*	I personally would be more than happy to pay for 'the
next generation of FOP', it was a great application when launched but
there is a lot more it could be offering. 

	*	I'd also like to implement a far smarter 'user
dashboard' similar to what Druid are developing. 

	*	Now I no longer work for Mexuar and don't have access to
it anymore I'd also like to pay for a single channel Mexuar license
rather than using 'lesser quality' experiences by other solutions. 

	*	Drawing on my own now defunct project - is the Asterisk
user community now ready for centrally provided services such as the
'off-deck processing' like the Tellme Speech Recognition Service
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Tellme . As demonstrated by Amazon
EC2 / S3 web services I'm a huge fan of cloud computing off-deck
processing, Should these style services also be able to take advantage
of an Asterisk 3rd party ecosystem licensing model. 

	So the suggested topics to cover this Friday (9th of May at 12pm
est usa) is this;

	1/ Should commercial software applications like SNAP Dialer even
be encouraged for the Asterisk community - or is this the slippery
slope?

	2/ Should this license schema model be centrally managed by
Digium - what are the alternatives?

	3/ Is a centrally managed approval process like Salesforce.com/
i-tunes appropriate for the Asterisk user community or should it just be
a 'published document schema' but all sales are handled by each
individual company (separate sales is my preference but it should be at
least discussed).

	4/ Is the G729 model an appropriate solution (my understanding
is it is tied to NIC addresses) - are there alternatives that should be
considered instead, what are the limitations of NIC licensing over
server IP address etc, how does this affect client applications running
on 'client' machines. Hopefully someone from Digium will join us on the
call to explain how the G729 license system works.

	5/ What type of applications would you like to see licensed via
this 3rd party ecosystem model.

	6/ What do we do from here? 
	Is this something Digium should be developing internally and
present to the Asterisk community as a 'suggested working model'?

	Is this something that can be developed by the community and
presented to Digium for their approval and adoption?

	Who on this call wants to be involved and what do you want to do
from here?

	Please understand that I'm interested in initiating these
discussions just as an Asterisk user. Neither I nor Cognation Pty Ltd
have any commercial interests in 1/ running this ecosystem 2/ consulting
to or making any commercial benefit in driving this project forward.
It's really come about as I as an Asterisk end user would like to see
more funds being made available for Asterisk application developers so
we can continue to build the greatest voip technology in the world and
while it's pretty cool now I feel that ongoing application development
isn't occurring as fast as it should be.

	This call will begin at 12pm est usa time - for those of you who
have not dialed in before the details are below.

	Talkshoe Web page details:  http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/22622 

	PSTN:  (724) 444-7444 Call ID: 22622 

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	INFO: 
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	For those of you who have never participated before make this
your chance to get involved, download the talkshoe chat application in
advance or even better go and listen to some of the previous 80 calls
archived in mp3 format here  http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/22622 

	Regards, 

	Dean Collins
	dean at cognation.net <mailto:dean at cognation.net> 
	Cognation Limited
	+1-212-203-4357
	+61-2-9016-4652 (Sydney indial)

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