[Asterisk-Users] TDM120 card, GPL and digum cards.

[Steven Critchfield]

On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 18:59 -0800, Shahed wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> > Personally I don't really approve of a company just taking Digium's 
> > design and cloning it. Based on the information on ipvolution.com, it 
> > doesn't look like that's what Atacomm is doing.  
> 
> Are the digium cards (or maybe just the digital ones) themselves
> not based on the opensource design of zapatatelephony.org ?

The old Tor2/T400P card is GPLed, as is the original 2 span ISA tormenta
card. But not any of the other cards.

> AFAIK, ipvolution would have to make any code that asterisk
> links against, available under GPL. So if they make their drivers
> and channel code available, its OK (??).

In asterisk, yes..

> What about their propiotary hardware dsp stuff ? Do they have to
> make that code available too, before anyone can use asterisk with
> their hardware ??

No they don't have to release DSP code. It is their option.

> I wonder if, when their card is released, if it does affect digium,
> would that perhaps affect asterisk itself ??
> 
> The only reason I ask is because, such questions are always raised
> by sceptics, when they consider big companies Vs Opensource PBX.
> i.e Question of stability and continiuaty of the project.

The difference here is a single crooked officer can take down a
proprietary company where as you can always squirel away a copy of all
the code and develop it yourself if you need continual support. 

-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>