[asterisk-biz] PBX Functionality for Less than the Price of a KeySystem (3Com Asterisk IP Telephony Appliance)

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 19:20 -0400, Steve Totaro wrote:
> Then without running ABE, I can upsell all kinds of integration (even
> things the customer never thought of) and be a true VAR, not just a
> guy that sells a box.


Just be careful about calling it asterisk if you add or remove anything.
See
http://www.digium.com/en/company/view-policy.php?id=Trademark-Policy 

Genuine Digium Software is the software in the same form as originally
distributed by Digium, without modification to the code of any extent.
The only exception is that software may still be considered Genuine
Digium Software if, in connection with distribution of that software for
a certain platform, code has been removed that relates to functions that
would not work on that platform in any event. Once a change has been
made to the software, even if that change may be permissible under the
GPL, the software is no longer Genuine Digium Software, because Digium
did not make or control the change.

Basically it means if you remove something for reasons other than
porting or add anything for any reason you cant use their trademarked
words (among others: DIGIUM, ASTERISK, AsteriskNOW, IAX, and DUNDi)
anywhere in the software or your product description.  

It effectively forces a fork, which then gets you into problems with the
disclaimers, given only for asterisk not your fork, for gpl incompatible
software like openssl (and libterm or whatever the netbsd one is which
is 4 clause BSD but I dont think has an official disclaimer).  Not to
mention replacing the few thousand times "those words" appear in the
code.

But hey so what if the gpl software is done in such a way as to
effectively prohibit distribution of modified code, 3rd party modules,
etc. the way they are doing it *is* within the license (trademark is
different from copyright, which is what the gpl covers).  You cant claim
they are violating the wording of the license on this particular issue.

Dont advertise it as asterisk or asterisk based per section "Uses that
are Not Approved by this Policy" paragraph 3 in certain places of your
web page (possibly not anywhere since that would influence search engine
results if the engine indexes based on content).

They claim a trademark on "iax" in that policy, but the US patent and
trademark office pulled that, listing it as abandoned.
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=e2bcne.2.1 (iax)
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=e2bcne.2.3 (iax)
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=e2bcne.2.2 (pocket iax)

USPTO didnt show a trademark for Dundi last I checked (a year ago maybe)
so none was ever registered.  They do at least use the correct tm symbol
for this, to substantiate a "common law trademark".  I didnt check for a
common law trademark on iax though, but it shouldnt have a (r) it should
be tm only if its there.
-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
Belfast +44 28 9099 6461        US +1 516 687 5200
http://www.trxtel.com the phone company that pays you!