This was definetely not what I was planning to write about! We have had a lot of things happening lately, but they all have to wait in order to make room for this article that I found through Twitter!
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse in the world of software patents, a reliable source sent me this response from Steve Jobs about a patent pool that’s forming and aiming to nail the open source codecs projects. It’s enough to make the weak at heart go weak in the knees and stop working on open source projects.
Here is Steve Jobs’ response to the letter from Hugo Roy:
From: Steve Jobs
To: Hugo Roy
Subject: Re: Open letter to Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 06:21:17 -0700
All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that it doesn’t infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.
Sent from my iPad
You can read the story here!
Original letter sent to Steve Jobs
It has really been long overdue, but including a propreitary codec like the G729 in open source firmware can be a bit tricky. The last thing we need is to provoke any of the big guys, so we had to move slowly and with the outmost care. But we are finally there, and the upcoming VoIPtel SE will have this very important codec integrated.
Ever since the very beginning we have been looking for a phone 
or a software application designed with the Receptionist in mind. We have found quite a few, but unfortunately it seems that they are either too expensive, too many limitations or simply no good at all. Until now! I have been testing this little beauty for about a week or so, and I have informed my partners that it stays with me! I hope that we will have it available from our webshop in 2-3 weeks, but until then you just have to trust me when I tell you this is truly the phone I have been looking for! Crystal clear sound, 5 SIP and 1 IAX2 trunks, handsfree quality that you normally only get when you pay 5 times more! I’ll be posting complete details on our site in a while, in the mean time I hope you enjoy the picture.
Some time ago I got a request for a VoIP phone with analog backup capability. I have to admit that I questioned the sanity of the person asking, but the more I was thinking about it the more I saw the potential. To make a long story short, my accountant have had it plugged in at her desk for more than a week, and it really does the trick. It has 2 SIP and 1 analog trunks, support three SIP servers synchronously and are very easy to configure through it’s WEB based GUI. I miss the possibility to connect a headset, but hope it will be included in a later model.
And now I’m signing off for a few days, leaving for Paris 
and a much needed vacation together with my family. I have to admit that I am looking forward to be away from my PC’s for a few days, replacing my office with Mickey, Donald, Minnie, Goofy and the others at Disneyworld! Thought I was getting too old for this, but it is sort of nice to use my kids as an alibi to be a kid again! ;o)
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.
I found this article in admin’s blog at www.palamida.com and believe it to be important enough to share with my readers:
On August 13 the appeals court decision as reported in the New York Times is a milestone for the open source world. As with many inflection points, the actual event seems pretty modest – in this case having to do with software for model trains. But the impact is large. It reinforces the rights of creators and authors to supply their work under whatever terms they wish. More specifically, it is a clear statement that copyright protection applies in this case of an open source software license, and by implication should apply for others. (btw this is a non-lawyers view so feel free to form your own opinion, or correct mine)
The use of open source software is simply how software is developed today. Our experience continues to show that most application development today is over fifty percent open source by volume (lines of code or MB of material). So the more we drive out any ambiguities in its status, the better off we are. There are still a lot of areas to be sorted out – licenses embedded within other licenses, patents, etc., but this ruling goes a long way toward making the notion of copyright unambiguous, and that is a big step forward