[asterisk-users] Asterisk 3rd party developed commercial software sales licensing platform

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 10:54:36AM +0100, Tim Panton wrote:
> 
> On 8 May 2008, at 09:36, randulo wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 5:40 AM, Steve Totaro
> > <stotaro at totarotechnologies.com> wrote:
> >> Can this thread be moved to the biz list?  It really does not belong
> >> here when words such as "the best way to monetize an application or
> >
> > The topic is still salient IMO, but again much posted here is  
> > opinion :)
> > The word license is often used. Sometimes a license is free, sometimes
> > not. The topic wold also be of interest to developers but not
> > appropriate for the devel list. I think with today's technology (email
> > filters for example) there's room for some latitude on this list. A
> > line can easily be drawn between "WE HAVE DIDs AVAILABLE" and a
> > serious discussion of licensing of 3rd party software in the asterisk
> > ecosystem.
> >
> 
> Ok, I''ll bite. The question is:
> Do we want asterisk to contain a licensing engine ?
> 
> Such an engine would need to :
> 	Hand out license tokens to proprietary modules linked to asterisk  
> (like codecs etc)
> 	Hand out license tokens to proprietary systems connected to asterisk  
> via manager (HUDs, etc)
> 	Hand out license tokens to proprietary endpoints talking to asterisk  
> (softphones, media-gateways etc)

This means that a free software limits usage. This is not a good idea.

If you have the source you can always patch your way around it. If
Digium will do something as foolish as adding such a patch, any
alternative distribution of Asterisk will remove it.

And be worth more than Digium's copy. 

> 
> It is hard to imagine how such code could be implemented in a way that  
> was compatible
> with GPL. I guess it could be put into ABE, but that's Digium's call :-)
> 
> Past experience with license managers shows them to be the biggest  
> drain on support resources and the largest single failure cause. Avoid 
> them if at all possible!

I agree that this is a pretty good way to kill the ABE product. I give a
little more credit to Digium.

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
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