[Asterisk-Users] Business Edition

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

On Monday 18 July 2005 23:50, Kevin Walsh wrote:
> Services could be provided, and money could be made, without resorting
> to selling closed source versions of the product.  Apparently, the
> closed version consists of the contents of CVS HEAD, with various
> changes made to "increase reliability and decrease risk" - according to
> the FAQ.  It would be nice if the binary version's source was available
> as a branch in CVS, but that probably doesn't fit into a closed source
> business model very comfortably.

And again...  nobody is making you use it.  You don't like it, and you make 
your argument clearly...  I don't agree with it but you're at least rational 
about it.  :-)

> I suspect that there is now less of an incentive to produce stable
> branches, and backport fixes to those branches from the development
> version, as this could possibly reduce the value of the closed version
> somewhat.  It could turn out that we eventually find the project in a
> permanent "in development" state, with no stable releases at all - just
> the CVS HEAD.  Once you start down that road, and rely upon revenue
> generated from closed source products, it's difficult to turn back.

This is a typical slippery slope argument.  There has been no indication that 
this is what is occuring, nor that this is what will occur.  I personally 
suspect that at some point the 1.0.x series of Asterisk and ABE will end up 
being the same thing; a feature-frozen version of Asterisk.  ABE might have 
some kind of checksum or other authentication/verification wrapper to ensure 
that it's actually ABE and not "almost ABE".

> Asterisk would not be the product it is without the efforts of the
> community who, it seems, have provided the majority of the source
> code and support for the project.  Of course, Digium try their best
> to not accept patches to "their" code unless they are accompanied with
> a "disclaimer".

Again, if people felt this was sufficiently bad they would not accept.  It's 
not a utopian everyone's happy happy solution but it's a realistic one and 
most people it seems come to that conclusion.  RMS would (and probably does) 
scream bloody murder about it but we need people like that to keep the middle 
from straying too far off center.

> According to the bug tracker (http://bugs.digium.com/main_page.php),
> the "disclaimers" are insisted upon "in order to keep copyright clean,"
> even though it has been pointed out, several times, that the agreements
> have no effect on copyright at all.  The "disclaimers" exist to grant
> Digium the right to close and sell your code.  If you're happy with that
> then that's your choice to make.

I am and I did make that choice.

> > If you don't want or don't like ABE, don't use it.  Nobody is cramming it
> > down your throat.

> That's not the point.

What exactly is the point, then?   You don't like it because it's not free as 
in libre, but you don't propose any solid way for Digium to maintain its 
profitibility and grow in order to help support the community and make 
Asterisk grow.   I understand that you want Asterisk totally free but I don't 
see a way to do so, and I don't think you do, either.

You've presented a slippery slope argument and a strawman (disclaimers) and I 
am interested in finding out how you'd do it if it were your ship to steer.  
You're not a screaming zealot and I think this discussion's good for the 
list.  

-A.