[Asterisk-Dev] Digium's G.729A codec problem

[Craig Southeren]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 21:38:03 -0600
"Michael Giagnocavo" <mgg-digium at atrevido.net> wrote:

> Sorry, you're absolutely right. My apologizes for posting so quickly. The
> VoiceAge is just object code, and while you can integrate it into your own
> projects, it's not open source. Sorry for polluting the list.
> 
> The only open source that I've found so far is the Intel voice encoding
> samples.

The Intel source code could be categorized as "open source" (no capitals)
but it does not qualify as "Open Source" (capitals). According to the
Open Source Definition at http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php,
the Intel code fails the very first test of Open Source ("Free
Redistribution"), which reads:

   "The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away
   the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution
   containing programs from several different sources. The license shall
   not require a royalty or other fee for such sale."

The requirement to pay a royalty for use of the codec directly contravenes
this statement. From the same page, the following statement makes it
pretty clear:

   "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code."

Of course, if you mean "open source" and not "Open Source", then please
ignore this post. :)

   Craig

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