[asterisk-dev] Intel to open Dialogic

[Gilmore, Gerry]

Steve,

Thanks for remembering! :-) 

Let me clarify a couple of aspects to this, lest there be some
confusion. 

For the record, and speaking only for myself, I am a complete, 100% open
source Fanatic(TM) who supports the GPL. Period. However, the division
of Intel in charge of this initiative is not quite as understanding,
despite my best efforts at education over many long years. That said:

1) This is not a joke (though some may differ after reading the whole
post...:-)

2) There are several pieces to the "Dialogic System Release" (SR).
Essentially, they are: the firmware pieces which run the DSPs on the
board and it's associated control logic; the device drivers which
communicate over the PCI bus; the software libraries which map the
Dialogic R4 API to the actual driver messages sent to the boards; and
admin type software. The firmware piece wil never be open sourced in any
way, shape or form; the device drivers and demo stuff are available
under GPL; and the libraries and OA&M pieces are under a new "Intel
Public License" which has terms and conditions which are not
GPL-compatible at all. This is one of the main reasons that the project
is not hosted at, say, SourceForge vs Kavi, an ISP.

3) Relative to the above, since the firmware and other pieces are not
available except through having a "real" SR already in hand, having
source to the pieces that are available for download won't really gain
anything, hence the requirement for an existing SR. 

4) Again relative to the licensing issue and the "chan-dialogic" channel
driver for Asterisk. Since the entire SR is not GPL-compatible, the
version of chan-dialogic soon to be released - being copyrighted to
Mark, since he wrote it - is not likely to be GPL'ed, though that is
Mark's call and it opens up an ugly can of license compatibility worms. 

So, there you have it. I'd be very interested in any feedback from the
community, and I promise to forward it to my management for them to
read.

Thanks,

Gerry   

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary
and those who don't.
 
Gerry Gilmore
Field Applications Engineer
Intel Corporation
(http://www.intel.com)
 

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Steve
Underwood
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 11:03 PM
To: Asterisk Developers Mailing List
Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] Intel to open Dialogic

support at sjobeck.com wrote:

>Will Intel really give us the Dialogic drivers & related software(s)?
>
>www.opensystemrelease.com 
>
>FYI
>
>Cheers.
>  
>
This is not news. Gerry Gilmore, who is with Intel, posted about this on

29th March on this mailing list. As far as I can tell they are only open

sourcing the Linux drivers. Since much of the interesting work  (and  
annoying restrictions) happens in the processors on the cards 
themselves, it seems like this open sourcing effort will be of little 
practical value.

Regards,
Steve

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