Re: [Iaxclient-devel] Re: codec support

[Mark S. <mar...@di...>]

> After reading this, I was thinking that asterisk with iLBC (which is
> currently built by default, right?) is no longer under the GPL itself,
> and then cannot actually be linked with other GPL code, unless the
> author of the other GPL code grants the same exception [in which case
> it's no longer actually GPL].

If you do not use iLBC, G.729, or OpenH323, you can link with other GPL
code, but we cannot accept GPL code into the Asterisk code base for this
very reason.

> I almost reconsidered that, because these exceptions make the license
> less restrictive.  You can always link GPL software against software
> with less restrictive licenses.  However, in order to link asterisk +
> iLBC + some GPL software, you would still then be linking the GPL
> module with iLBC, which you can't do, because then you'd be linking the
> GPL module with something more restrictive.

Precisely.

> Licenses give me headaches.  I guess it would be a lot simpler if there
> was just Modified-BSD, GPL, and LGPL, instead of the multitude of
> incompatible free-software licenses we have today.

Different licenses have different goals, so to some degree that is going
to be a problem.  The GPL has a lot of strengths and is very popular to
use, but strict GPL does not permit us to use some legacy technologies
(e.g. G.729, iLBC etc) that need methods of being supported.

Mark