Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2000 3:02 am Post subject: [Asterisk] LGPL vs MPL (vs GPL) my 2c
Looking at the archives of this list, it would seem that there's
some major issues with integrating the MPL licenced openH323 stuff
with the GPL licenced Asterisk PBX.
There seems to be several interpretations on what can be done and
how far, so has anyone forwarded any questions to ESR or someone else with
the experience and knowledge to comment ? To me it's rather sad that a
project with such potential has to be held up by this.
Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2000 4:03 am Post subject: [Asterisk] LGPL vs MPL (vs GPL) my 2c
On Friday, August 11, 2000 1:03 PM, Rohan Tronson
[SMTP:rohan@bowtie.com.au] wrote:
Quote:
Looking at the archives of this list, it would seem that there's
some major issues with integrating the MPL licenced openH323 stuff
with the GPL licenced Asterisk PBX.
There seems to be several interpretations on what can be done and
how far, so has anyone forwarded any questions to ESR or someone else
with
Quote:
the experience and knowledge to comment ? To me it's rather sad that a
project with such potential has to be held up by this.
This issue has been raised on this list many times. In fact, Stallman was
actually asked to comment on this situation and I exchanged several emails
with him on the subject.
For those who missed the discussion, a summary follows.
There is nothing in the MPL (used by by OpenH323) that prevents it from
being combined with GPL code, or any other code for that matter.
Unfortunately, the opposite is not true - GPL code can only be used with
GPL compatible code.
Stallman's response to this was that OpenH323 should be relicensed under
the GPL and then the problem would go away. The fact that the success of
OpenH323 has depended upon the ability of commercial companies to use it in
their closed source projects, and that this could not have occurred using
the GPL, was of no interest to him.
The bottom line is that OpenH323 has many dozens of contributors, so any
license change would require agreement from every contributing party. Given
that some of those contributors are commercial companies, OpenH323 cannot
be relicensed to GPL without major surgery to remove bits that were written
for other people/companies under MPL. I doubt this could be done without
crippling the project. It would certainly take more time than I have
available!
I believe Asterisk could be dual-licensed as Marko is effectively the sole
author. Marko is the best person to ask about this.
At this stage, the only viable solution is for someone to write a module
which allows OpenH323 to operate in seperate process and talk to Asterisk
via pipes or sockets.
Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2000 1:17 pm Post subject: [Asterisk] LGPL vs MPL (vs GPL) my 2c
Quote:
I believe Asterisk could be dual-licensed as Marko is effectively the sole
author. Marko is the best person to ask about this.
At this stage, the only viable solution is for someone to write a module
which allows OpenH323 to operate in seperate process and talk to Asterisk
via pipes or sockets.
As per the end of the discussion we had on this last time, I have produced
a library implementing IAX which I would be willing to license under GPL
with specific permission to link against OpenH323 and/or Mozilla if
someone actually can actually get it implemented. The library is not fully
functional, but is functional enough to both send and receive a call to an
Asterisk server using IAX. My plan is to keep the driver updated as I
revise and enhance the IAX protocol.
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