[Asterisk-Users] Vonage

[Roderick Montgomery]

According to Jon Pounder:
> 
> What would you think if I sold you a screw and told you, you could only
> hit it with a hammer unless you bought the screwdriver licence ?
> 
> You would think I am an idiot and use the screwdriver anyway. Same thing 
> here. A feature restricting licence for hardware is a moronic concept.

Your analogy is cute, but inaccurate. If you wrote your own ATA firmware
from scratch (a hammer) to run on the ATA-186 hardware (a screw), you would
not legally require a separate license (or screwdriver) of any sort.
However, ATA-186 hardware is much more proprietary than your everyday screw,
and rolling your own firmware is much more difficult than using a hammer to
drive a screw. If you want to run the Cisco code to speak SIP/MGCP/h323,
you'll need a software license. SmartNet is optional, though only $10 or so.

Look, this is all going to boil down to a licensing brouhaha anyway. Let's
all just understand that Cisco sells valuable software separately from
valuable hardware and makes a hefty profit on both. If you follow the rules,
you pay for the software you run on the ATA. If you don't follow the rules,
find a disreputable AVVID-certified Cisco reseller to sell you the unbundled
spare (ATA-186-I1=) hardware alone and copy an unlicensed firmware image
from Vonage or a buddy. I'll be happy to pay the piper for solid hardware... 
and software.

rm
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 Roderick Montgomery   rod at thecomplex.com   <URL:http://thecomplex.com/>
the fool stands only to fall, but the wise trip on grace... [Sarah Masen]
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