[Asterisk-Users] Re: Re: Digium Website Update: Asterisk Business Edition

[Aidan Van Dyk]

trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com wrote:

> Further his point seems to be anti BSD license.  If I write software and
> give it away free what difference does it make to me if someone sells
> it.  They still have to find someone who is willing to pay for it when
> they could get it from me for free.  Because I chose to give it up for
> free I would not have any expectation of profiting off it.  As long as
> credit is given I dont see any reason people would freak out that
> someone is selling something you give away for free.  Unless of course
> its envy, that you did the work but couldnt find a way to sell it and
> someone else did.

Actuall, the point is with Asterisk, he *ISN'T ALLOWED* to sell a closed
product based on his work with it.  Only Digium (and those buying
"commercial" licences from them) can do that.  He got the source under the
GPL, so must respect it.  Digium, on the other hand get's to make closed
products from it - that's the licence/disclaimer that developpers (have the
choice to) agree to when submitting code for inclusion.

Most people haven't had a problem with that, because, in the past, Digium
has been a "benevolent" keeper-of-the-code, not a direct competitor to the
contributors.  But that Digium is directly competing with what others are
trying to provide, and is openly hostile to contributors who are using it
in "non-intended ways" (you can read that as without buying Digium hardware
to use run it), contributors are starting to become leary of Digium's
intentions.

> I find people are often against anyone making any sort of profit on
> anything, read the archives where people freaked that people were
> selling preconfigured asterisk boxes.  How dare they provide hardware,
> configuration support, and who knows maybe even telephone tech support,
> and they were *gasp* charging for all of that.

Well, obviously, Digium was completely against anyone making a profit from
using Asterisk that they couldn't easily have a large upper hand in.  As
long as the upper hand was mainly just "theoretical", nobody really minded. 
But now, as this clenched upper hand is smashing down on contributers, they
are getting alarmed.

> I see this whole argument (which acutally comes up a lot when you are
> discussing different licenses) as futile.  There are those that are all
> fore freedom, the freedom to choose the freedom to do what you want with
> the software, and others who want to hold people to a restrictive
> license and remove choices.  I personally choose to exercise my freedom
> and give others more freedom in what they do with my software.

I'm not really talking about the licence argument at all.  I'm purely
talking about Digium behaviour, and the brick wall separating both sides of
their mouth.

> If someone who started development on a project wants to exercise their
> freedom and choose a license different than what I would have chosen I
> respect that choice.  However I personally wont release anything under
> the GPL because I feel that its too restrictive on what others can do
> with what I write, why I prefer the BSD style license, it gives people
> more choice, more freedom.

Don't you wish Asterisk was under a more BSD-style licence?  But that's
neither here nor there - They chose to give you asterisk under a GPL, and
require that if you want to contribute to Asterisk, they have full right to
use it to try and run you out of any Asterisk-related business.  Again -
that's their right, and many people accept that.