Any consultant, business, or person that intends to reliably sustain
support and maintainance contracts of software for commercial purposes
must have some acceptable level of control over that software. It used
to be that Digium controlled all of the commits to the CVS repository.
I don't know if this is still true or not, but with the amount of
activity going on in this community, it would be rather difficult to
thoroughly check and filter all changes before committal without
stunting progress and development. So it could be said that the level
of control that Digium has over the public CVS repositories is not
likely acceptable for its purposes in supporting their commercial
customers. A proprietary fork that they have full control over is only
natural to expect because as with most other open-source and
openly-devloped projects with multiple developers, you really cannot
expect to have an acceptable level of control over the software until
you take a snapshot and test it and work it and patch it until you are
comfortable with using it for your customers. You really would not be
wise to use a publicly-modifiable code repository straight-up for
commercial purposes without pulling it out and doing that work to become
comfortable with it and to get some control over it. If Digium can do
this and if in so doing adds monetary value to their repository, then
more power to them.
As for the dual-license issue... there are businesses out there that may
want to integrate or otherwise use Asterisk in their proprietary and
closed-source projects. This may not be compatible with the GPL or with
any other open-source license that would have been acceptable to Digium
at the time when Asterisk was open-sourced. So in order to be able to
provide a product to these kinds of customers there must also be a code
repository that uses a license that is compatible for that purpose. I
understand this, and I think that it's only natural. What I don't
understand, though, is why the community's gratitude towards Digium
should be anything more than what Digium's benevolence was towards them.
Digium open-sourced Asterisk with the GPL. Wonderful. Bravo. That's
really great of them... honestly. (Aside from that decision having made
Asterisk successful in the first place - for without it being
open-sourced where would Asterisk be?) Now the GPL does not require me
to return any developments to them, but just that I cannot keep the code
and my developments from those to whom I distribute them (which in many
cases may be nobody else). But to be fair, and to show my gratitude
towards Digium and the community, I may therefore choose to return those
developments to the community. In fact, I expect the good will to
return to me in time because I am part of the community to which I am
contributing my work. Anyway, I think that these sentiments are quite
normal. BUT, what is this? My contribution will not be accepted
without a royalty-free disclaimer for Digium to use my work without
compensation in their proprietary-licensed fork. This is what I do not
like.
I can understand that Digium needs to have a proprietary fork. I can
understand that they do not want to see their fork diverge far from what
the open-sourced version may become. But to expect contributors to go
above and beyond returning the same favor (publishing their work to the
community) in the name of gratitude without further compensation is too
much. Demanding what's more than fair and succeeding in doing so is
unequal footing. If I develop something and you want a royalty-free
proprietary version of it then pay me for it - even if it's just a token
or nominal amount. Or at least trade me in work. Give me something
back of similar value. But to expect me to develop (or better yet, hire
a programmer to develop) work and then to require a private license to
it without any compensation in order for me to contribute it back to the
public community is simply too much.
Go ahead and have a proprietary fork, sell it, have it specially
licensed. But please, please, please treat the community fairly.
Otherwise it causes unrest in the community, discourages contribution,
encourages forking, and triggers forum threads like this one.
Lee.
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