My attorneys checked this out pretty carefully. Sipro represented, in writing, that they are the only proxy for all known owners of g.729 annex a and annex b. None-the-less, I'll forward your concerns back to my attorneys for a double-double on this.
I'm actually expecting a written "legal opinion" on the matter this week. J Steve Underwood wrote: > Jac Barben wrote: > >> All: >> >> Because G.729 is so important to my world, I've contacted each of Intel >> and Sipro. For the benefit of others that may need licensing here are >> the costs and contacts: >> >> Intel: >> http://www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na/eng/download/locations/index.htm#perflib >> $199 one time and $80 a year. >> >> > This part is trivial. :-) > >> Sipro: http://sipro.com >> Sipro is handling the G.729/G.723 patents for all those that claim have >> claimed ownership: France Telecom, Mitsubishi, Electric Corporation, >> Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Corporation,Universite de Sherbrooke (The >> G.729 Consortium), NEC and Nokia. >> Typically Sipro charges an annual fee per port of use. The killer here >> is the minimum - 1000 ports. Your entry fee is: US $9,884. >> >> > Its worse than that. NEC and Nokia are not actually represented by > Sipro, and you must pay them separately. All Sipro do is tell you who > you need to contact. NEC and Nokia want about as much as Sipro, so you > can more or less double the prices Sipro quote. Unless something has > changed recently, the price you quote is an illusion brought on by the > confusing way they present things. I seem to remember it works out > somewhat higher, and then you double it for the NEC and Nokia part. > >> I'm pretty certain that I'm going to have to step up to these costs. To >> that end, I am thinking of building a library of the Intel/Sipro work >> for use with OpenPBX and distributing the libraries for commercial use, >> as permitted by the Intel/Sipro licensing, at a fee similar to the >> structure defined by Digium. >> >> Is there any interest here or am I the only one with commercial use plans? >> >> > We know this needs sorting out. A telephony platform without G.729 just > won't fly at this time. The Freeswitch people have the same issue, and > we hope we can work with them to a mutual solution. There is a company, > whose web site name I forgot, which is providing G.729 for small users > like us. There web site makes it look like they are dead, but the > Freeswitch guys have been in touch with them, and it seems they are > still active. > > Since we have plenty to do right now, I've just been waiting to see what > Freeswitch dredges up as a workable solution. We intend to support these > things through pipes, with the transcoder running as a separate process. > That completely avoids licencing issues with our pure GPL core, and the > overhead is no big deal when you compare it against the compute cost of > the codec. > > Regards, > Steve > > _______________________________________________ > Openpbx-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openpbx.org/mailman/listinfo/openpbx-dev > > _______________________________________________ Openpbx-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openpbx.org/mailman/listinfo/openpbx-dev
