Re: [Linphone-developers] bug tracker

[Test Sv]

There is an email from Andrey Utkin that raised a very important issue, and 
reminded me with many actual situations that I have seen, or came across. He 
said " I asked for SAVPF support, I was replied off-list with the proposition 
to discuss commercial issues with Belledonne".

The issue is: there are now too many software packages that have dual license 
arrangements. The free open source code agreement, and the commercial 
agreement. Linphone is one of those software. Based on my experience, the dual 
license agreements have most (if not all) of the following main characteristics:

    - there is an official company/business behind the software;

   - the free open source version of the software is mainly used as a marketing 
tool for the commercial version of the software;

   - users and developers using the free open source version of the software 
are used like free labour to debug/test the software and report the bugs to the 
company. The bugs reported are used to improve the commercial version of the 
software without the cost of the labour that into debuging the sofwtare. This 
is mostly the main reason they do not respond to the bug reports made by the 
free open source code community;

   - in many cases, the impoved (with less bugs) commercial version of the 
software does not make to the open source version, or it will take a long time 
to make it;

   - some free open source code projects encourage and tell developers how to 
re-brand their software. One project inparticular that comes to my mind is 
CSipSimple. This will cover the neccessary main legal issue about starting a 
new project. The CSipSimple project is a good software, but it has a very 
difficult GUI that only experts can use. It requires a major a overhaul to the 
set-up GUI to make easy for a child to set up the sowafft;

   - the companies behind the software usually say that they do not have the 
time to respond to the free open source code community because they do not pay 
anything. There was an email from a member of developing team just arrived 
before sending my email with the same message!. However, this is completely 
untrue. The open source community pays for the service by offering free labour, 
tiime and effort to improve the software, and which the company is using to 
improve the software and make money on it;

   - the source codes for those software with dual license agreements are 
written in such way to make it almost impossible to re-brand the software. This 
comment applies to the source code of linphone;

   -companies usually have carefully selected people that they can say that 
they are not officially working with the company, but they wil defend the 
company points of views and pratice in any discussions on the internet;

   - there is absolutely nothing illegal about having the dual license 
agreements, and every company and/or person has the complete right to use it. 

   - finally, having another fork/project for the software will not solve the 
problems, because everything will be still legally owned by the company and 
under it's control.

Likely, other developers/users might have or think of other technical and legal 
issues that the community needs to think about?.

Regards;





--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 1/13/15, Andrey Utkin <address@hidden> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Linphone-developers] bug tracker
 To: address@hidden
 Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2015, 11:54 AM
 
 Thanks to everybody for
 their input to this discussion.
 I am also
 unsatisfied with Belledonne governance over the project.
 When I asked for SAVPF support, I was replied
 off-list with the
 proposition to discuss
 commercial issues with Belledonne.
 When I
 reported a crashing bug in Android app (just use AVPF and
 it
 will manifest), I got no reply.
 
 What about creating a
 community-driven ML, bugtracker and probably
 even github organization? Let's name it
 "Linphone CE" (Community
 edition).
 
 If
 we use github, then "issues" on each repo would
 serve as both ML
 and bugtracker
 (implementation is not the best in terms of features,
 but it's so accessible).
 
 -- 
 Andrey
 Utkin
 
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