Hello all!
I've been watching a while discussion around Kannel Unicode support and
decided to propose another way to resolve this issue.
As ex-Wapit I happen to know that Wapit had version of Kannel with
end-to-end Unicode support on SMS side that was in its testing phase and
not released to Open Source when Wapit went bancrupt(sp?). That modified
version was designed and developed by Wapit Kannel team (Wirzenius as
architect), so it is of same quality and thoroughness(sp?) than rest of
the Kannel and not a quick kludge, altought it was not tested enough to
be released. And because it was not released, its rights are now owned
by Wapit's bankrupt's estate.
Now, I am working for MatchEm Ltd, and I am in need of
Unicode-supporting SMS gateway and rather than implementing it once
again, I thought about buying the unreleased version from the bankrupt's
estate and releasing is as Open Source. We (MatchEm Ltd) are currently
communicating with lawyers of the estate and negotiating the price and
terms. If the price turns out to be reasonable, this could be one way to
get Unicode SMS Kannel working right away.
And the question is: If we can make a reasonable deal of those rights,
are people willing to start developing it? There will be a plenty of
work merging all the changes made since June 2001 to the Unicode version
and we do not have enough resources to do it alone. And it wouldn't
benefit much to have two separate versions and thus splitting the
developer community. On the other hand, this solution could provide us
the fastest way to real Unicode support and end the arguing between
people about how to do it.
The second question is: Are there any companies willing to share the
cost of buying Unicode Kannel to Open Source? We will have to buy all
rights to it, and I assume the price tag will be way higher than buying
just non-exclusive lisence. On the other hand, it's just a set of
modifications, and rest of the software is available for free, so they
can't bill so much than for other software there. Anyway, I believe that
at least by dividing the cost among multiple companies we could get the
price much less than any of us doing it alone and most propably with
higher quality. Those willing to participate, please contact me and I
will forward your contact information to our business side for further
negotiations.
Hoping to get advance soon,
Jari
--
Jari Juslin, Development Team Leader MatchEm Ltd
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.matchem.com/
Mob. +358-44-380 0012 fax: +358-9-644 091
