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

Sat Jun 11 13:10:42 MST 2005

On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 15:09 -0400, Aidan Van Dyk wrote:
> 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 have seen more people on this list freak out if people but non digium
hardware to run their asterisk box (usually at a substantial price
discount).  People on this list have actually freaked out that someone
would dare buy a cheaper card (like the x100ps for example, which afaik
digium doeesnt sell anymore, granted this was an older thread) and not
support digium (there was a similar rant over using voice modems instead
of an x100p way back when).

> > 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.
> 

Its gpl code unless you buy otherwise.  Which means that you have to
respect that license.  The profit isnt from the software (which if you
get for free doesnt cost you anything) its for the configuration of the
system, any consulting that may be done to see what is needed in a given
environment, hardware (often with markup), etc.

The same holds true for a consultant setting up and installing a web
server based off apache, or even redhat selling CDs, or even if you want
to go to stallmans own words, selling tapes of emacs for $150 when he
quit his job and found he needed money to pay the rent, and subsequent
forming of FSF to solicit donations when people stopped paying $150 for
a tape of emacs, and now the proposed GPL 3.0 to charge corporate users
of GPL code who dont acutally distro a product (like google and ebay for
example).  

Personally I dont see a problem with any of this.  If digium makes it
too difficult to do stuff asterisk *can* be forked unless that is
forbidden (because its GPL I didnt bother to look at forking issues
because I dont develop for GPL products, why when I stated in a
different thread I would write a product people were asking for I said
bsd or creative commons or something else they come up with, my choice
is that I dont believe in the GPL so I personally wont develop for it,
but I dont tell others they should or should not use that license).

> 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.
> 
From what I read in this post its not that different than stallman maybe
they are just taking cues from him?  Since I missed it why dont you
recap the highlights of what specifically they have done in as brief way
possible if I am incorrect in what I am reading into this.

What you have said applies to any gpl code, you cant profit off the code
itself, but can profit on tertiary things like media charges, consulting
work, service contracts, preinstalled systems (the labour to install and
configure it of course).  

There are very few licenses that allow you to 'do whatever' with the
software part of it, BSD is one (although you have to give credit as per
the standard license).  Many licenses have even conflicted with being
distributed with other products so those packages have to be added on
after.  I believe this was a problem with apache initially, although
since they roll their own license it was easy for them to correct that.
There have been a bunch of products that are free to get, 100% open
source but have a restriction on bundling with other products, which of
course makes it unusable in any standard distribution.  Normally these
issues get resolved fairly quickly (what developer wants to make it a
pain to install their product?)

> 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.

Because of my personal prejudices to the GPL I wish that ever GPL
product was under the BSD license, I would develop for a lot of other
projects that way.  But that is my choice, not one I would force on
someone else who writes code.  

Because of the parasitic nature of GPL (yet another thing I personally
dont like about it) modules written for other programs are deemed
'derative works' and as such must fall under the GPL (exceptions are
dynamically linked libraries).  You *could* write addon software to
asterisk and package it that way and choose any license you want,
including restricting specific companies from using it.  Granted that is
more work, and it could easily be undone (either in a similar vein that
compaq did the pc bios or through a pearpc/cherryos style), but the
choice is there.  From what I have seen of asterisk there isnt much left
to be done that isnt core improvements.  Its AGIs and add on programs
that use the manager API.  And the majority of the requests for
functionality I have seen stem from those things.  Codecs would be the
only progressive thing I have seen lately anyway.

Because of the power asterisk has with the AGI interface, you could
greatly extend asterisk without writing anything that needs to be
submitted to or approved by digium.

The SS7 issue recently came up, and I dont blame them for not releasing
that totally open and free.  It got certification with carriers, that is
not normally a cheap thing to have occur.  Most carriers dont like
totally open stuff that way and may refuse to interconnect becuase they
havent tested your particular version of it, or are afraid that you did
something odd.  SS7 has weak security, there are 3 companies I am aware
of that make SS7 firewalls becuase of how weak the security is in SS7.
It was never designed to be as widely deployed as it is, that too has
caused problems.  I am willing to bet that digium is cheaper for
asterisk+ss7 than anything else on the market that does the same level
of functionality.  That is their choice and I see legitimate reasons for
it to be the way it is.

They give away parts for free, highly usable parts.  Not something
totally crippled that cant be used unless you pay.  In that they are
doing everyone a favour.  They could be like cisco, lucent, siemens, the
list goes on, and not release anything for free.  Somehow I think that
would have been worse for many people.  What is an entry level system
with the basic functionality that asterisk provides?  $30k?

If this is truely a problem why dont people just fork it (if that is
allowed, as I said I didnt look at the specifics of their particular
license since I have no plans to code for GPL products) and get space on
sf.net (its free!) and create their own branch of asterisk.  Somehow I
dont think this will happen, not becuase of a license issue but because
people that tend to complain about 'bad evil corporations' tend to not
have enough time in the day to actually develop something.

Look at 'big evil corporations' like apple.  They did in a year with
mach what the FSF/GNU wants to do with HURD and still cant (to quote
stallman 'its really hard' while explaining why after 10 years HURD
still doesnt exist).  Apple was able to do this largely because they
paid people to do it.  That money had to come from somewhere.  While
apple did release darwin (the mach microkernel+ BSD components - but no
mac components so largely not highly useful) under a license even the
FSF claims is 'free'.  Had it not been for the 'big evil corporations'
that would not have existed at all.
-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200
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