[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.