Brian Capouch wrote:
I would like to see you say out loud, just once, that those of us who know all of that and disclaim our work to Digium are not necessarily idiotic boobs who don't know what we're doing.
As Joe already pointed out, he doesn't believe this to be the case :-)
However, this thread brings to mind a side-issue that I've been bothered about: I have improvements in my local Asterisk tree that I _cannot_ get merged into the main Asterisk tree, no matter how wonderful/exciting/magical they are, because they are based on code written by others, released under the GPL, and those authors will not agree to give Digium an unrestricted license to their code.
This is a big concern to me, for two reasons:
First is that it can (and will) stifle Asterisk development to some degree, because interested parties cannot just grab "best of breed" code that they find out there in the wild (licensed under the GPL) and incorporate it into Asterisk. This means that developers must implement _from scratch_ equivalent code if they want it to get into Digium's Asterisk tree.
Second is that even if a developer implements the code _from scratch_, if they have seen the original code distributed under the GPL, and their re-implementation ends up being very similar to the original, they cannot legally contribute that code under the terms of Digium's disclaimer, because there is some doubt as to whether they have complete rights over what that they are contributing. Certainly Digium is protected, because the disclaimer absolves them of the burden of proving whether any contributed code is actually being legally contributed or not, but the contributor exposes themselves to possible actions, and it could harm the Asterisk name/brand/reputation if such code was later found to have been improperly contributed. This issue as recently dealt with in the Linux kernel community, but there is less of an issue there because contributions are pure GPL, there is no dual licensing model available.
In summary, it bothers me that contributions to Digium's Asterisk tree must be "clean room" implementations, without reference to existing alternatively-licensed implementations, unless those reference implementations can be re-licensed under Digium's terms. Please understand that I too am very happy that Digium exists, has provided Asterisk to the community, and I'm happy to help them earn an income and continue supporting/extending Asterisk. What I'm concerned about is that Asterisk will not be able to grow as well as it could if these license restrictions were not in place, and since some of us (myself included) are basing business enterprises around Asterisk, I want to see the product be able to do everything it is capable of, in the best way possible, not only the ways that are possible via clean-room implementation.
Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, don't play one on TV, nor have I discussed these issues with one. I do, however, have a very good understanding of the GPL and Digium's long-form disclaimer (or at last I think I do <G>), and I have discussed these issues with others who I have reason to believe also understand the relevant documents.
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Brian,
Keep this thread.
It will make excellent material for Philosophy 320 - Logic and Critical Reasoning, Evaluating Arguments.
James Taylor
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