[asterisk-users] Is Asterisk really good?? (added, What is ViciDial??)

[Matt Florell]

On 4/14/08, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 02:47:12PM -0400, Matt Florell wrote:
>  > On 4/14/08, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>  > > On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 01:54:22PM -0400, Matt Florell wrote:
>  > >  > With VICIDIAL you can do inbound/outbound/blended call handling and
>  > >  > there are all sorts of features for call handling and agent functions.
>  > >  > The latest VICIDIAL release is GPLv2, but for future major releases we
>  > >  > are moving to the AGPLv2. VICIDIAL is free as in cost and speech.
>  > >
>  > > I noticed you had gone Affero.  Could you expand on that decision, if
>  > >  you have a moment?  What's the difference between the two licenses, did
>  > >  you consider GPLv3, and what's your situation on contributed code?
>  >
>  > We finally decided we would be going to AGPLv2 for our next major
>  > release due to a few hosted service providers out there that were
>  > altering the code to VICIDIAL, offering "VICIDIAL hosted" and not
>  > contributing their changes back to the project. And under the GPL they
>  > have every right to do this as long as the code is not installed on a
>  > client-owned machine or transferred to a client. This is known as the
>  > GPL-ASP-loophole. AGPL just closes that loophole and says that any
>  > customer of a hosted service like that has the right to the source
>  > code too.
>
>
> Ok; that's what I *thought* Affero's change was, but it's kind of hard
>  to tell from the actual license...

Yes, we had to read it several times ourselves, the version we have in
our SVN trunk is what we settled on since there are several different
text formats of the AGPL license floating around.

>  > We have not done enough research on GPLv3 yet to want to move to it,
>  > and a lot of other GPLv2 projects are staying put as well for the time
>  > being.
>
> I'm not really fond of it myself.

I don't know enough about it at the moment to be fond of it or not
myself. As more people move to it and it's provisions are tested I
will hopefully be able to move from neutral to one side or the other
at some point.

>  > As for contributed code, we require a statement of "this is my code
>  > and the project can use it and redistribute it" from the author.
>  > Nothing very detailed at the moment because there are not many code
>  > contributors and the project is entirely GPL-based and is not
>  > dual-licensed.
>
>
> Yeah; I was just worried about someone getting pissy about your
>  relicensing from GPL to AGPL.  Not that I expect it or anything... :-)

I am fairly surprised that I have not heard a single negative comment
about it from any members of our VICIDIAL community or anywhere else.

There are actually other web-based projects that are moving to it as
well(which is how I originally heard about it) and since it became an
official OSI-approved Open Source License along with the special
provisions that GPL made allowing for AGPL compatibility, there are
more people talking about it in the last few months.

MATT---