Steve,
Thanks for remembering! 
Let me clarify a couple of aspects to this, lest there be
some
confusion.
For the record, and speaking only for myself, I am a
complete, 100% open
source Fanatic(TM) who supports the GPL. Period. However,
the division
of Intel in charge of this initiative is not quite as
understanding,
despite my best efforts at education over many long years.
That said:
1) This is not a joke (though some may differ after reading
the whole
post...
2) There are several pieces to the "Dialogic System
Release" (SR).
Essentially, they are: the firmware pieces which run the
DSPs on the
board and it's associated control logic; the device drivers
which
communicate over the PCI bus; the software libraries which
map the
Dialogic R4 API to the actual driver messages sent to the
boards; and
admin type software. The firmware piece wil never be open
sourced in any
way, shape or form; the device drivers and demo stuff are
available
under GPL; and the libraries and OA&M pieces are under a
new "Intel
Public License" which has terms and conditions which
are not
GPL-compatible at all. This is one of the main reasons that
the project
is not hosted at, say, SourceForge vs Kavi, an ISP.
3) Relative to the above, since the firmware and other
pieces are not
available except through having a "real" SR
already in hand, having
source to the pieces that are available for download won't
really gain
anything, hence the requirement for an existing SR.
4) Again relative to the licensing issue and the
"chan-dialogic" channel
driver for Asterisk. Since the entire SR is not
GPL-compatible, the
version of chan-dialogic soon to be released - being
copyrighted to
Mark, since he wrote it - is not likely to be GPL'ed,
though that is
Mark's call and it opens up an ugly can of license
compatibility worms.
So, there you have it. I'd be very interested in any
feedback from the
community, and I promise to forward it to my management for
them to
read.
Thanks,
Gerry
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who
understand binary
and those who don't.
Gerry Gilmore
Field Applications Engineer
Intel Corporation
(http://www.intel.com)
-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-dev-bounces lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-dev-bounceslists.digium.com] On Behalf
Of Steve
Underwood
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 11:03 PM
To: Asterisk Developers Mailing List
Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] Intel to open Dialogic
supportsjobeck.com wrote:
>Will Intel really give us the Dialogic drivers &
related software(s)?
>
>www.opensystemrelease.com
>
>FYI
>
>Cheers.
>
>
This is not news. Gerry Gilmore, who is with Intel, posted
about this on
29th March on this mailing list. As far as I can tell they
are only open
sourcing the Linux drivers. Since much of the interesting
work (and
annoying restrictions) happens in the processors on the
cards
themselves, it seems like this open sourcing effort will be
of little
practical value.
Regards,
Steve
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