On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 18:16 -0400, David Boyd wrote: > > I thought that IBM released the design of the IBM pc to the world, and > they never tried to control the expansion. If true then the argument > doesn't support the use of Asterisk in the "Fair" manner that you > stated. >
IBM didnt, compaq spent $1M (meant something back then) to reverse the bios so that you could build a clone. They did it in a controlled environment so that it would be legal (ie one clean group wrote the spec, another clean group coded from that spec, and never did the two groups talk to each other, they were sequestered for a year or something while writing the spec). Now I dont know what terms IBM has on its trademark, that is for them to decide, they may have allowed people to use it, with attribution, or it may have been that the law does give more rights than the digium trademark policy, I dont know. What I do know is that the officially stated trademark policy and disclaimer policy by digium prevents people from exercising their rights under the GPL and that is what I am requesting to be changed such that those rights are not effectively deprived. I also see this as an opportunity for digium to speak to the community and state their real level of commitment to open source, and to the GPL version of asterisk. If they ignore this request without response, or state for all to read that their policy is to deny GPL rights then you know they do not believe in the GPL or the developers that contribute under that license, similarly if they respond that they will allow changes to allow the rights under the GPL then they are making a statement that they do believe in and want to support the developers that made digium and asterisk what it is today. The choice is really theirs, but I think it would be a huge mistake for them to turn their backs on the very people that have advocated, marketed, developed, sold, and recommended digium products and services. -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel Belfast +44 28 9099 6461 US +1 516 687 5200 http://www.trxtel.com the phone company that pays you! _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
