[asterisk-dev] [Code Review] Remove chan_usbradio and app_rpt.

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 1:16 PM, Steve Totaro wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Tilghman Lesher wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 7:48 AM, Steve Totaro wrote:
>> > I am not sure why it is not maintained when Jim Dixon has the code on
>> > the repo, supposedly something in Asterisk is broken and broke app_rpt.
>>
>> No, when the change from Zaptel to DAHDI was made, the API was cleaned
>> up in the process, and that broke the interface.  The change from
>> Zaptel to DAHDI was all about someone else's trademark on the Zaptel
>> name.  The maintainers of app_rpt have made a strategic decision that
>> they don't want to do the work to make their code compatible with
>> DAHDI.  There's no technical reason why they couldn't -- there's
>> several competing hardware manufacturers who have kept pace and made
>> their work compatible with DAHDI.
>
> I know all about the name change.  The name change was bogus anyways, a
> calling card company and a company that works with a multi function VoIP
> platform are different enough to have the same name.

That's a nice legal theory.  Will it hold up in court?  Do you have
the money to spend to see if it will hold up in court?  Digium has
staff attorneys, and they apparently either didn't think that it would
hold up in court, or they didn't want to spend the money to make it
hold up in court.  It is much easier and less costly to change a name.

> http://business.zibb.com/trademark/zaptel/29737279
>
> Filing Date:1999
>
> Zaptel used by Jim Dixon common law trademark with interstate commerce was
> at the latest 1999 and probably earlier.  I cannot find the original BSD
> driver for the first Tormenta card, but that was the start of the Zaptel
> Telephony Project.  If it was before the federal filing date, then they had
> no grounds for anything laying claim.

No.  Timeline matters for copyright law.  This is trademark law.  It
is completely different.

> The timeline is incredible, Zaptel -> DAHDI (2008) Digium bans use of
> Asterisk in Adwords (2008).....

I'm not sure how that's relevant.  Digium already had a trademark on
the Asterisk term before the trademarking of DAHDI.

> Who are these competing vendors????  I know of zero.

Let's start with Xorcom, whose drivers are distributed with DAHDI.
There are others, some of which work with DAHDI drivers as
distributed, some of which modify DAHDI post-distribution.

-Tilghman