[new post of previous summary of Tekelec acquisition after input from Daniel-Constantin
Mierla on this list earlier today. This post can also be found at
http://onsip.org/ ]
AFAIK, Tekelec bought
iptelorg.com with its intellectual property (commercial
extensions/extras/related software to SER) and its employees.
Iptel.org was NOT part of
the deal and is still sponsored by FOKUS Fraunhofer (as stated on the
iptel.org website).
SER is an independent GPL project and Tekelec cannot do anything about that.
However,
iptelorg.com sponsored development resources on the open source SER. Tekelec
is free to decide to stop this sponsoring. I cannot see how this can be in their interest,
but if the focus on the development they want to do with SER is too far away the open
source project, the project may not give Tekelec enough value. If this happens, the
developers must decide whether to continue in their spare time, quit SER development, or
look for employment with another company willing to sponsor hours on open source SER
development. In addition, SER has MANY other developers who were not involved at all with
iptelorg.com. Of course, as some of the most active coders were with
iptelorg.com, such a
decision may impact SER's development.
Also, note that the OpenSER project has branched off with many main contributions from
Voice System. The Voice System developers are not affected by the Tekelec deal. However,
as OpenSER since openser has a published policy to stay compatible with ser and thus
continously incorporate SER code into OpenSER, OpenSER will be equally affected (in terms
of reduced code contribution) if those contributing this SER code are prevented from
working on the code in their day-time job. Again, both SER and OpenSER have many
non-iptelorg.com contributors to the code bases and the development will not halt.