asterisk users - May 2008 - FW: Asterisk 3rd party developed commercial software sales licensing platform

Hi Randy,

 

As discussed on Friday the 9th of May I would like to host this weeks
Voip Users Conference Call.

 

The purpose of this call is to discuss the community's feelings about an
Asterisk 3rd party developed commercial software sales licensing
platform.

 

The plan is that some form of documented published schema be implemented
that will allow for 3rd party software developers to sell their software
applications using a common licensing model similar to the way G729
licenses are sold by Digium. 

 

 

 

Basically this discussion came about for a 3rd party ecosystem question
a few weeks ago when Cory Andrews from VoIP supply was on the Voip-Users
conference call.

I asked the question - how much of VoIP Supply revenue is product
hardware versus applications - he said we don't sell any services such
as ITSP hosted Asterisk so I replied that wasn't what I was thinking of
and gave the example of Snap Dialer which is a low cost (I paid $20 for
it) application which allows me to dial names from Outlook.

 

He said they didn't sell any applications like this at all but would
consider selling them if this was an opportunity presented to him.

I then talked about some of the consulting I did for Salesforce.com and
how they have built an entire ecosystem of third party applications all
built by other people apart from salesforce.com but utilizing the
documented API's and application security /licensing etc.

My comments were that although Asterisk should always remain a free open
source application that developers need to eat and pay rent as well.

If there was some common marketplace that developers could sell small -
low cost third party applications to the Asterisk community that Digium
had some type of overview/management control over who listed etc that
this would deliver a stream of revenue that would encourage further
application development.

The question I then posed to the group was if anyone knew how Digium
managed the sale and licensing of the G729 codes.
And if this was an open published standard that could it be used as the
basis for the Asterisk ecosystem license model.

Now I know it's not perfect and can be hacked but everything can be
hacked. The idea is to build apps cheap enough that it's not worth the
effort of hacking. If anyone has some alternative suggestions on how
apps should be licensed we'd like to hear them this Friday.

I know there were discussions in the early days of the Mexuar launch
about how they could license a single channel of the Mexuar Corraleta
application rather than the entire server license for $2000. The issue
always came down to how we could license it to 1/ a single channel
license. 2/ tied to a single machine and not transferable (currently the
Mexuar license is hard coded in the application to the servers IP
address).

 

I know for me personally although I have donated to numerous bounty
requests (I even tried to get one developed for video conferencing a few
years ago that was around the $10,000 range) I haven't seen the ongoing
continual development that would benefit the Asterisk community.

 

*	I personally would be more than happy to pay for 'the next
generation of FOP', it was a great application when launched but there
is a lot more it could be offering.

 

*	I'd also like to implement a far smarter 'user dashboard'
similar to what Druid are developing.

 

*	Now I no longer work for Mexuar and don't have access to it
anymore I'd also like to pay for a single channel Mexuar license rather
than using 'lesser quality' experiences by other solutions.

 

*	Drawing on my own now defunct project - is the Asterisk user
community now ready for centrally provided services such as the
'off-deck processing' like the Tellme Speech Recognition Service
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Tellme . As demonstrated by Amazon
EC2 / S3 web services I'm a huge fan of cloud computing off-deck
processing, Should these style services also be able to take advantage
of an Asterisk 3rd party ecosystem licensing model.

 

 

 

 

So the suggested topics to cover this Friday (9th of May at 12pm est
usa) is this;

 

1/ Should commercial software applications like SNAP Dialer even be
encouraged for the Asterisk community - or is this the slippery slope?

 

2/ Should this license schema model be centrally managed by Digium -
what are the alternatives?

 

3/ Is a centrally managed approval process like Salesforce.com/ i-tunes
appropriate for the Asterisk user community or should it just be a
'published document schema' but all sales are handled by each individual
company (separate sales is my preference but it should be at least
discussed).

 

4/ Is the G729 model an appropriate solution (my understanding is it is
tied to NIC addresses) - are there alternatives that should be
considered instead, what are the limitations of NIC licensing over
server IP address etc, how does this affect client applications running
on 'client' machines. Hopefully someone from Digium will join us on the
call to explain how the G729 license system works.

 

5/ What type of applications would you like to see licensed via this 3rd
party ecosystem model.

 

6/ What do we do from here? 
Is this something Digium should be developing internally and present to
the Asterisk community as a 'suggested working model'?

Is this something that can be developed by the community and presented
to Digium for their approval and adoption?

Who on this call wants to be involved and what do you want to do from
here?

 

 

Please understand that I'm interested in initiating these discussions
just as an Asterisk user. Neither I nor Cognation Pty Ltd have any
commercial interests in 1/ running this ecosystem 2/ consulting to or
making any commercial benefit in driving this project forward. It's
really come about as I as an Asterisk end user would like to see more
funds being made available for Asterisk application developers so we can
continue to build the greatest voip technology in the world and while
it's pretty cool now I feel that ongoing application development isn't
occurring as fast as it should be.

 

 

 

This call will begin at 12pm est usa time - for those of you who have
not dialed in before the details are below.

 

Talkshoe Web page details:  http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/22622 

PSTN:  (724) 444-7444 Call ID: 22622 

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For those of you who have never participated before make this your
chance to get involved, download the talkshoe chat application in
advance or even better go and listen to some of the previous 80 calls
archived in mp3 format here  http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/22622 

 



Regards, 

Dean Collins
dean at cognation.net <mailto:dean at cognation.net> 
Cognation Limited
+1-212-203-4357
+61-2-9016-4652 (Sydney indial)

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On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 07:24:48AM -0400, Dean Collins wrote:
> If there was some common marketplace that developers could sell small -
> low cost third party applications to the Asterisk community that Digium
> had some type of overview/management control over who listed etc that
> this would deliver a stream of revenue that would encourage further
> application development.
I see quite a few third-party applications developed around Asterisk.

A recent entry:

http://astcdrview.berlios.de/

  astCDRview is a lightweight, Web-based, multi-language Asterisk SQLite
  CDR viewer that supports multiple outgoing carriers, multiple incoming
  numbers, billing, an address book, and extensions

(as seen on Freshmeat)

I don't think that application is something that only needs to be sold.
If this will be the case, we'll end up with locked cages that cannot be
integrated well into solid solutions by integrators.

If that short-term profit and no feedback is what you're after, then
sure, go ahead.
> 
> The question I then posed to the group was if anyone knew how Digium
> managed the sale and licensing of the G729 codes.
> And if this was an open published standard that could it be used as the
> basis for the Asterisk ecosystem license model.
I personally consider the current g729 licensing as a usage annoyance.
Yet another example of the silly licensing overhead caused by proprietary
software.

(Use speex)

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
icq#16849755              jabber:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com
+972-50-7952406           mailto:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com
http://www.xorcom.com  iax:guest at local.xorcom.com/tzafrir

Creating an "Ecosystem" for Asterisk developers to make money is a
good thing.

I suggest creating an Asterisk Business Consortium (ABC), to which Digium is
invited to participate as a member :)

I think it's best for everyone's interests that it not be centrally
controlled, but bring together individual developers and companies in a
consortium, ABC, who have the objective of making money with Asterisk, and
pooling their ideas, business models, common needs, talents, and resources to
show how you can make money with Asterisk.

But the ABC brings together those who have an Asterisk passion to create viable
business products and services that they can sell and compete in the
marketplace.

It would be great to have a web site that would facilitate ABC.  

We already have a discussion forum (asterisk-biz).  What we need is a way to
organize the discussion into potential products (needs), document those needs
(Wiki) and provide a Marketplace (like Amazon.com) where ABC can sell and
license their products.

I also suggest that this money making discussion be moved to the asterisk-biz
discussion list.

--
Jeffrey Thompson <mailto:jthompsonic at gmail.com>
POBOX 536, Suwanee, GA, 30024
770-234-8509

Dean,

I think this is really an interesting topic. However, you list a lot  
of issues that can propably fill many conference calls. I'll try to  
comment on a few that is important to me.

Please note that Digium has taken a few steps to enable a 3rd party  
Asterisk Marketplace, right now hosted on their web. I personally  
think the marketplace deserves a separate address, but think it's a  
good first step that needs feedback from companies working with  
Asterisk. It's fairly cheap and Digium needs your feedback on this and  
where you want this to go. I applaud any effort for the thousands of  
small Asterisk entrepreneurs out there. 3COMs and PolyComs have  
marketing money to join the partner program for the "big guys", but  
most Asterisk companies have not.

Another issue that you touch is Digium's licensing for small scale  
OEM's. Being able to create an application based on Asterisk source  
code with source addons and start selling it on a small scale. That's  
very hard today. OEM agreements seems to start on 3Com levels, not on  
the typical "innovative Asterisk company" levels. If enough of us  
discuss this with Digium and show missed oppurtunities, I hope they  
will listen. The dual licensing scheme is useful in some situations,  
but I wished it was more reachable for small companies with smaller  
projects that aims to be worldwide and global within months... :-)

A very different one is bountys or sponsorships in general. I've been  
a proud receiver of a good sponsorship from Voop from a long time, up  
until the company failed in December last year. After that, I've found  
no one interested in sponsoring my work or funding my pet project  
Codename Pineapple (only a few fans that want to sponsor parts of it -  
thank you).

Even funding small projects seems to get more negative feedback ("He's
profiting on open source") than positive support (one offer of 10  
dollars). My personal opinion is that I from my Swedish horizon see  
Digium employing more and more developers focused on the Open Source  
project, but very few other companies contribute on a regular basis to  
the project. This might be the nature of Open Source - more takers  
than contributors, but I was naive enough to believe it would change  
over time.

A third item is the ability for a marketplace for addons that doesn't  
require licensing from Digium. Tools that connect over manager and/or  
AGI/FastAGI. I think we could be better at putting these to market  
than we are - internally in the community. I've seen plenty of tools  
during my meetings with community people at conferences and trainings,  
tools that could find resellers and distributors world-wide if we had  
the internal network for it. There's a large group of Asterisk system  
integrators with very similar customer bases and projects world wide.  
Together, we would be bigger than many of the companies we see as  
large companies. Look at the size of Digium/Asterisk world booths at  
VON the last years compared with Cisco, Avaya etc - by working  
together we show our strength and will get larget deals.

That was my 10 cents during a lab in the Asterisk SIP MasterClass in  
Barcelona, where we work hard to build scalable networks with Asterisk  
and OpenSER.

Cheers,
/Olle

PS. If anyone is interested in sponsoring my Asterisk(TM) work,  
contact me off list. </shameless plug>

Just a quick reminder this call is starting in 3 hours from now at 12pm
(that's 12pm est usa or 4pm gmt time).