Archive for December, 2007

Giving and Taking

markster December 25th, 2007

First of all, I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas (well at least to those who celebrate it and/or appreciate the sentiment)! It’s a day when many people, myself included, put an especially significant thought into giving. What many people do during Christmas is give gifts (perhaps in recognition the gift that many Christians celebrate receiving 2000+ years ago).

In the early days of Asterisk, when I went to conferences and sat on stage with folks from Cisco and Avaya and other big telecom vendors, they tended to look at Digium like a charity, and Asterisk as purely a gift. However, it’s important to note that while in some sense, Asterisk is a gift, it is also a gift that has some special meaning and responsibilities associated with it (perhaps more like an engagement ring). In particular, Asterisk is licensed under GPL, which allows a wide variety of free use, but also requires that distribution be done in a similarly gift-like method.

Occasionally, however, I have heard people complain that the Digium GPL license is somehow not a real GPL license, since Digium also offers Asterisk under a commercial license.

This no more makes Asterisk “less GPL” than it makes a gift less valuable just because it’s given to someone else as well. There is nothing about dual licensing that in anyway takes away from what is given under GPL. Furthermore, if the concern is that people can create commercial derivative works without releasing the code of their changes, do those same people who complain also object to the GNU C Library which is released under LGPL? Do they also complain about the Apache web server, which is released under an even less restrictive license? X-Windows? Almost all of BSD? All these systems allow commercial exploitation. The dual licensing model that Digium has chosen introduces an explicit monetary cost to choosing the proprietary route, thus providing greater direct incentive to people to choose to open their changes, and further allowing people who do not choose to open their changes to subsidize the work that Digium does with Asterisk by allowing us to add more open source resources (think Green Energy Credits here). In fact, our staff of open source dedicated programmers has more than doubled in 2007 alone!

The only people with a real reason to be upset feel that way because they cannot choose the proprietary route without paying a fee. In other words, it gets in the way of their desire to make money through proprietary add-ons without having to share in the cost of development of the underlying technology.

I have so many things to be thankful for this Christmas, but among the top of the list is the gift of so many contributers and customers who allow me to continue to give through my work at Digium.

Genuine Asterisk

beelinebill December 22nd, 2007

The past few days demonstrate the risk associated with people using “non-Genuine Asterisk” products. Open Source can be a wide reaching tool but when it’s not supported by the right reputable company, there can be risk associated it. The concept of “phoning home” was dissected by forum members and slashdot over the past few days. The topic is deeper than a pure phone home to Fonality issue and is far reaching to many users. We agree with the concept of opt-in/opt-out; our open source Asterisk is totally free and AsteriskNOW free with optional opt-in registration. These Genuine Asterisk open source products from Digium do not have phone home tricks. If you care to read for yourself, here are a couple of links:

Linux-Based Phone System Phones Home
Just Say No: Hidden BOTs and Asterisk Don’t Mix

Randy Resnick’s VoIP Uses Conference on Talkshoe (www.talkshoe.com) today also had a pretty good open conference about the details of what occurred and Fonality/trixbox’s response (Voip Users Live Conference/Podcast).

There were questions about funding for open source projects, opt-in and opt-out concepts, lots of talk about monetization of open source projects, people asked about Digium developing internal monitoring tools so all the usage details can be accumulated from all Asterisk versions if its in core code. We’d like to hear your input and ideas there. We do not have any projects that address this concept as we are sticking with open source as “open” and not requiring data collection from the user. Our Commercial business allows us track users from subscription registrations. Let us know what you think about this very sensitive topic!

It’s Over….

beelinebill December 20th, 2007

Well, as I said last night, come back for the winner today. It was a terrifc day for Digium. We honored a Make-a-Wish child at our Holiday Luncheon and a Digium executive kissed a pig! Who do you think won? Digium raised $13,000 for Make-A-Wish foundation which is a feat to be proud of. Attached is the link to the team who came up with kiss-a-pig. There are pictures on this site. Also, a video will be coming soon as well.

http://www.makeadigiumwish.com

Happy holidays to all you readers and Digium followers and supporters. We look forward to serving you in 2008!

….the Digium Management team.

This one’s for charity…..

beelinebill December 19th, 2007

Many folks at Digium volunteer to help others during the year by fund raising and donating time to local charities and churches. This time of year many Digium employees have raised the bar for innovation and fun in fund raising and has brought a new level of energy and excitement to Digium. When Kevin Fleming, co-maintainer of Asterisk, offered his time to Make-A-Wish Foundation® earlier this year, we were proud to have a new member of the Huntsville community join such a prominent charity. Kevin kicked off the Christmas fund-raising season and Digium agreed to match a percentage of the money raised. Make-A-Wish foundation is a great way to brighten a child’s life this time of year!

Employees formed “Wish” competitive teams to raise funds and the competition has set a new bar almost every day. From lasagna lunches to pancake breakfasts, donated airline tickets to raffle, a Wii, and other raffles and now the grandaddy idea of all: “The Kiss the Pig” event. I have said this before, but “You can’t make this stuff up!”

In locations around Digium, there are 5 piggy banks (see inserted picture) with the Digium’s executive names on each. The winner (most money collected) will win the ever-growing-popular contest to kiss the pig. Now the executive team have quite a mix of backgrounds. One individual was brought up on a real live farm. One was a city-dweller, but all are in the contest!

The Flyer

The Piggy banks:pigs.jpg

What I consider most impressive is the heart and generosity of the Digium people. But the innovative ideas people are deploying to raise the funds and the time and effort people are donating is so “Cool”. Excitement fills the halls and labs and conference rooms daily. People joke about what’s next?

We will have to wait and see who has received the highest donations. Which Digium Executive will kiss the pig? Stay tuned for tomorrow or shortly thereafter and on this site will be a video: http://www.makeadigiumwish.com

Wonder who it will be? As of earlier today, I was in the lead……

Ten classes in November, a record for Asterisk Training

roderickm December 11th, 2007

Last month, there were TEN week-long Asterisk Bootcamp classes around the world. Digium, and our very capable partners, held classes in:

  • San Jose, California
  • Mexico City, Mexico
  • Huntsville, Alabama (in our new headquarters!)
  • Montreal, Canada
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Madrid, Spain
  • Geneva, Switzerland
  • Dubai, UAE
  • Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • Melbourne, Australia

Asterisk Bootcamp map November 2007

Even with this record pace, our plans are to expand in 2008. Next year we’ll offer new courses:

  • A shorter, more basic Asterisk course than the current Asterisk Bootcamp, to introduce telephony concepts and the fundamentals of Asterisk deployment. If the Bootcamp is allegro, this course will be andante.
  • A deep-dive Asterisk course. With an intro course available, the Bootcamp can slow its pace a bit to focus on the heavier topics, giving more time for students to benefit fully from the meaty, hands-on labs with expert instructors.
  • Switchvox training! Now that Switchvox Free Edition removes the price barrier, we’re preparing to launch online and live training in 2008 for this next generation of business phone systems.
  • Olle Johansson, Asterisk SIP Developer, will offer the powerful SIP Masterclass again starting in January, concentrating on using Asterisk and OpenSER to build carrier-class scalable networks.

Thanks to our Authorized Training Partners for making November the busiest Training month to date! We couldn’t have done it without you.