[asterisk-users] G729

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Thursday 17 September 2009 10:01:46 Moises Silva wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Gordon Henderson <
>
> gordon+asterisk at drogon.net <gordon%2Basterisk at drogon.net>> wrote:
> > On Thu, 17 Sep 2009, Tilghman Lesher wrote:
> > The "free" one or the Howlets one?
> >
> > However I can't see how the binary blobs of patented code which digium
> > sells doesn't voilate the GPL either.
>
> Because Digium OWNS the Asterisk code, and they make an exception for their
> binary code, is their right as owners (copyright holders) of the code.

Close enough.  Digium doesn't own the Asterisk code, but it possesses enough
of a copyright interest in the code, as well as licenses from all
contributors, in order to be able to make that exception.  There is a way for 
Howlertech to keep their G.729 licensing code under wraps, run against 
Asterisk, and comply with the GPL, but they haven't done it.  They'd have to
separate out the interface code from the codec code, develop a pipe interface
(or shared memory interface, i.e. SYSVSHM) between the two, run their binary
blob in a separate process, and distribute the source for their interface code
to Asterisk, along with the binary blob, enough for someone to be able to
compile the module themselves.

-- 
Tilghman Lesher
Digium, Inc. | Senior Software Developer
twitter: Corydon76 | IRC: Corydon76-dig (Freenode)
Check us out at: www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org