[asterisk-biz] Open letter to digium, asterisk developers and consultants

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 18:16 -0400, David Boyd wrote:

> 
> I thought that IBM released the design of the IBM pc to the world, and
> they never tried to control the expansion. If true then the argument
> doesn't support the use of Asterisk in the "Fair" manner that you
> stated.
> 

IBM didnt, compaq spent $1M (meant something back then) to reverse the
bios so that you could build a clone.  They did it in a controlled
environment so that it would be legal (ie one clean group wrote the
spec, another clean group coded from that spec, and never did the two
groups talk to each other, they were sequestered for a year or something
while writing the spec).

Now I dont know what terms IBM has on its trademark, that is for them to
decide, they may have allowed people to use it, with attribution, or it
may have been that the law does give more rights than the digium
trademark policy, I dont know.

What I do know is that the officially stated trademark policy and 
disclaimer policy by digium prevents people from exercising their 
rights under the GPL and that is what I am requesting to be changed 
such that those rights are not effectively deprived.

I also see this as an opportunity for digium to speak to the 
community and state their real level of commitment to open source, 
and to the GPL version of asterisk.  If they ignore this request 
without response, or state for all to read that their policy is 
to deny GPL rights then you know they do not believe in the GPL 
or the developers that contribute under that license, similarly 
if they respond that they will allow changes to allow the rights 
under the GPL then they are making a statement that they do believe 
in and want to support the developers that made digium and asterisk 
what it is today.  

The choice is really theirs, but I think it would be a huge 
mistake for them to turn their backs on the very people that 
have advocated, marketed, developed, sold, and recommended digium 
products and services.



-- 
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!