>Hello Max,

On 06/17/05 15:42, Max Malloy wrote:

>> Dear Bogdan, Dear Daniel,
>
>> as a user of SER for a number of years I very much appreciate your 
>> work and effort to liberate SER from the clutches of iptelorg.com and 
>> its microsoft llike attitude.  I am sure it was not easy for you to 
>> stand-up against those who have paid your salary for so long and given 
>> you the chance to collect the knowledgy and software upon which you 
>> have built your own company.

>you are right about collecting knowledge, but, fwi, the work there was 
>related to different research projects, and SER was more a side effect. 
>If you can review the cvs logs, many contributions of us were made in 
>our free time, many features in SER were never used in a project of the 
>institute. Because we lived at that time paid by the institute, all the 
>code (also the one made in our free time) is copyrighted by the institute.


 
I did not know this. You must have had a lot of free time 
(Fraunhofer must be a great place to work at -5 People have so much free time to 
allow them to write such great software) You should actually sue the Fraunhofer so as to 
get the rights for the software. By the way what was your research topic. I have googled 
a bit and the only paper I found with your name was something about billing and SER 
(which looked very much like your current product) 

>> I also agree with you that it is utterly rude of the Fraunhofer as the 
>> maintainer of the iptel.org site to make a reference to its start-up 
>> -the fact that Fraunhofer has invested so much (including your 
>> salaries I assume) does not give it the right to do so.

>I do not agree with you, they have the right and can do what they want, 
>they own the system. The issue was whether this is acceptable or not for 
>the community.

 
Oh. So what is the issue. I can not remember that anyone has ever complaind about the 
reference and I guess none of the real users of SER even go to the home page of iptel.org
(anyone using SER would go directly to the SER pages). But I can understand that you are not 
happy that your company is not mentioned 

>> Are you planning to extend openSER with the VNT and the VPS products 
>> you have announced on your web site? As a user of SER and I guess a 
>> lot of other users as well have painfully been longing to a billing 
>> engine that can just do these things your products are promising. A 
>> better support for NAT traversal would also be nice.

>Let's not mix the things. It is about free contributions. It does not 
>mean I will make everything I own public. Would you give me your car? 
>There are stand alone applications, different software or products, and 
>I do not think everybody is going to give their products for free even 
>they support open source or openser, in particular. Dont expect that you 
>will have a nice live just supporting openser so everybody will give you 
>what you will need. Would you share the earnings of using this software 
>with the others?

 
I do not understand this now. so you are compalining that iptelorg provides closed source
components to help it receive some revenue and fund its people who are working on SER.
On the other hand you find it strange to ask you about your stuff. 

>> I would recommend to put these parts under the BSD license.

>It is not possible, it is not compatible with GPL license. One would 
>have to write a new ser from scratch to do so.

 

I just mean the parts you have implemented separately from SER

>> Our company would like to build an NGN product that would benefit 
>> greatly from your components. iptelorg has insisted on us paying 
>> money for any source code they produce -it seems they still did not 
>> realize that they do not own SER -SER and all its extensions belong 
>> to the users and the community.

>You are not right at all, you own your code and extensions, not others. 
>As you can see, every file has a copyright holder which own the code. He 
>can do what ever he wants to do, you can do also (take and modify), but 
>do not expect that iptelorg or somebody else to do for you something for 
>free when you require.

 
So if they are right in their business model I am not sure why you are making such a big fuss. 
It seems that you have the same attitude to open source as iptelorg (it is only good as long
as it serves your own needs). For me it looks like this new fork is just a strategy to grab the 
control on SER. And even worse, I am afraid that if your company becomes more successful you will 
act just as iptelorg and will turn your back on the SER users and the SER community. 
With this background, to be honest, I would prefer the current situation and the control of iptelorg
(at least we know how they work) than shifting my confidence to a new group that is just as commercial.
  

>The issue which generated this situation was related to free 
>contributions. When someone wants to make something available for 
>others, and users need it and it is something good, why to drop it.

 
looking at the complete discussion and at your answers above, I am not really sure whether 
I should really believe this. 
If your real concern is SER then I would have assumed that you would have tried to discuss 
this with Andrei and Jan (they sound like really reasonable guys). 

>So, let's analyze and interpret better the reality.

 
To be honest, I am really dissapointed from your answers and I am more tending to believe that
the reality is more about control and company strategy than real concern about the well being of
the SER community and users. 

Regards,
Daniel

>   
> My best regards
>
>
>
>
>
>
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