[Asterisk-Users] SysMaster and GPL Violation

[Steven Critchfield]

On Fri, 2004-11-12 at 09:26 -0600, Joe Greco wrote:
> > I too demand sysmaster either pay Digium for a non-gpl license or 
> 
> Now, here, this gets to the heart of a problem I've hinted at before.
> 
> Digium is making people sign a draconian agreement that gives up rights
> to patches and features that are integrated into Asterisk, by signing
> rights over to Digium.
> 
> I would expect that most contributors do not realize that they are setting
> up a scenario where Digium can, in fact, sell non-GPL Asterisk licenses to 
> third parties and essentially sell their work.

I think we all knew that. In fact, we consider it a good thing as it
allows Digium an income to keep paid developers working on the code
base.

> For all of the people who wanted to tell us about how horrible the BSD
> license is, please explain how this state of affairs is any better.

(My memory is spotty and I am not invoking the thread) 
This is like a benevolent dictator, in as much as the only person
allowed to make a proprietary version is Mark/Digium. That is how it is
better. I choose as an option to allow Digium that special right as a
sode effect of merging and maintaining the patch I needed in asterisk.  

> > publicly admit the fact that they have repackaged Asterisk and 
> > contribute enhancements to Asterisk back to the GPL.
> 
> They are not required to contribute changes back.  They are merely
> required to disclose the source code for the Asterisk portion of their
> product.

Incorrect. They must disclose any asterisk modifications as it is the
running asterisk code at least to the customer. All modifications of the
code are forced to be covered by the GPL. The customer at this point has
the opertunity to then contribute those changes back to the community as
the GPL explicitly allows redistribution. The difference being that the
company in question doesn't have to distribute the changes back to us,
but they have to distribute them to their clients.
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>