[Asterisk-Users] IAX aproprietary protocol

[Steve Kann]

Stefan de Konink wrote:

>On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Joseph wrote:
>  
>
>>How can proprietary protocol be open protocol?
>>    
>>
>
>If the protocol is fully documentated and this documententation is
>available to anyone you can speak of a open protocol. It is not an open
>'standard', because it is only supported by Digium, thus proprietary.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary
>  
>

But, the protocol isn't "owned" by anyone, nor is it secret. Assuming 
that wikipedia's definition is definitive:

> Something *proprietary* is something exclusively owned by someone



nobody "owns" the IAX2 protocol.

> , often with connotations that it is exclusive and cannot be used by 
> other parties without negotiations.
>
> It may specifically mean that something is covered by one or more 
> patents <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent>, as in /proprietary 
> technology/. It can also mean that the copyright 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright> is used in a way that 
> restricts the users' freedoms.


anyone can use the IAX2 protocol. I don't think it's possible to 
prohibit anyone from using a protocol, unless it's impossible to encode 
it without requiring patents. I don't think any patents (that digium 
owns, or that aren't stupid), cover IAX2.

And certainly, since the two main implementations are licensed GPL and 
LGPL, they're pretty open.

Of course, there is draft documentation that has just been released, but 
even if there wasn't, that wouldn't make it proprietary.. And the 
documentation has always been there, in chan_iax2.c, iax.c, 
iax-parser.c, iax2.h, etc -- it just has been in a language other than 
English.

-SteveK