[App_rpt-users] Lies, damn lies, and John David McGough

[Buddy Brannan]

Did I read correctly that David believes app_rpt is public domain and not bound by the terms of the GPL? 

Here’s what I see at the top of my copy of app_rpt.c, from the 1.4pre23 version of app_rpt that exists in an installation of ASL. I’ll happily have a look at an earlier version. But if there’s another version of app_rpt.c with no explicit licensing terms, someone please point me at it and I’ll happily admit to my wrongness. But…admittedly I only go back to 2009, although I don’t think I’ve ever seen a version that did not contain this:

/*
 * Asterisk -- An open source telephony toolkit.
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2002-2014, Jim Dixon, WB6NIL
 *
 * Jim Dixon, WB6NIL <jim at lambdatel.com>
 * Serious contributions by Steve RoDgers, WA6ZFT <hwstar at rodgers.sdcoxmail.com>
 *
 * See http://www.asterisk.org for more information about
 * the Asterisk project. Please do not directly contact
 * any of the maintainers of this project for assistance;
 * the project provides a web site, mailing lists and IRC
 * channels for your use.
 *
 * This program is free software, distributed under the terms of
 * the GNU General Public License Version 2. See the LICENSE file
 * at the top of the source tree.
 */


Actually…I believe I have another version of app_rpt.c that mentions even more contributors, like W9SH for example. It also listed the GPL and referred to the license file in the Asterisk source tree. Actually, app_rpt.c was distributed with the GPL’ed Asterisk bistro for ages, even though it stopped working with anything after V1.4presomething. Xelatec had a version in their Xipar bistro that was based on 1.4.44pre-something, as I recall, also. 

I also think Jim’s views on the GPL were pretty clear from many of his posts on this list before his death. While he certainly encouraged the Arch linux effort that became hamvoip…I remember when this was going on, and Hamvoip ran only on the BBB…and he said “If you can do better, have at it”, I’m confident in my opinion that the “Contribute your changes back to the community” was strongly implied, if not directly stated. 

While I agree that my non-lawyerly opinion is that HamVOIP is in violation of the GPL, and while I also agree that this is not a division that’s any good for the ham community generally nor the ASL using community in particular, I don’t think Brian’s approach to addressing the problem is particularly helpful either. Some who are digging in their heels may be more willing to see the very valid points he makes if he did not give the arguments he poses the tone of a personal, bitter vendetta. 

Now…can we please try to *heal* this rift, rather than tearing it even wider? 

I’ve seen the arguments for why David has not released the source. Mostly, he has said that his changes are incompatible with non-HamVOIP distributions. OK, that’s fair, and it’s also fair to say that mixing code without properly taking into account any changes could be a pretty bad idea. But how do we know? More to the point, how do we know that someone else might see the changes, and further see a way to implement them in such a way as to make them available to everyone, in all branches of the code, or at least see a way to make something similar work? The idea that the rest of us simply can’t understand the changes and will just break more stuff if we try is a little insulting, and it doesn’t leave much room for learning. A good thing about GPL software is…lots of eyeballs can potentially spot flaws, make improvements, or see a better way. The disadvantage is that if you break it, you get to keep all the pieces. But that’s a small price to pay, IMO, for the benefits. 

Vy 73,

Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV - Erie, PA
Email: buddy at brannan.name
Mobile: (814) 431-0962



> On Jul 5, 2019, at 10:22 PM, Willem Schreuder <willem at prinmath.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 5 Jul 2019, David McGough wrote:
> 
>> As a matter of record, no HamVoIP code comes from any ASL source (e.g.
>> github).  Our codebase pre-dates ASL's existence.
> 
> ASL's existence or not is irrelevant.
> 
> Without Asterisk, no AllStarLink version could exist.  Everybody including Jim Dixon relied on the GPL to be able to create derivatives of Asterisk.
> 
> That means you are bound by the GPL.
> 
> ================================================================
> Dr. Willem A. Schreuder,  President,  Principia Mathematica
> Address:  445 Union Blvd, Suite 230,  Lakewood, CO  80228, USA
> Tel: (303) 716-3573   Fax: (303) 716-3575
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