Open Source vs Copyright, the choice!
For the last 16 months Bruce has spent almost all his time working on our contribution to Asterisk and the Open Source community. In the beginning he based his work on an early version of AsteriskNOW and the BAPS firmware made available by David Rowe, the father of the IP04 PBX. Most of the time Bruce had to work alone and look for bugs and bad programming in the original firmware, a fact that unfortunately contributed to a slow evolving firmware.
We received a large number of requests about making the firmware ready for use by small and medium size businesses, a request that we finally were able to accommodate with the release of Astfin based VoIPtel CE (Community Edition) and SE (Supported Edition). While CE is completely free of any cost the SE is linked to a Support Contract that even extends the warranty of the PBX to the expiration of the contract.
Even though it has been very expensive for our company to dedicate all this time and resources to this project it has in some ways been both rewarding and educational. We have met a large number of truly great people, and then we have bumped into the occasional person or company who take our work, remove all credentials and promote it as their own. Or copy material from our website without asking permission and with a total disregard for the Copyright statement.
Two weeks ago I received some promotional material from a company in Hong Kong. Upon reading the material I found that it was an exact copy of something I have written and posted on my website. I confronted the company who in turn blamed it on their supplier, a supplier that they refuse to reveal.
I am a bit confused about how I will deal with this case. I will gladly give my permission to most people who ask if they can use my work, and in most cases I will not even accept any compensation. But I really don’t like the kind of attitude put forward by this company. My options are to file a legal case, publish their name as well as our complete communications here, inform CeBIT and other fairs about their practise, and probably several more. What do you think? Please send your opinion and advice to feedback@voiptel.no , it will be greatly appreciated.