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

Sat Jun 11 14:19:08 MST 2005

just a small sidenote: digium does not sell ss7 licenses, thats someone
else doing that.

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

>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.
>
>
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