Digium Asterisk appliance

[Iain Barker]

Background:
I purchased a Digium Asterisk Appliance (model AA50) early in December. The 
device comes with embedded flash and a CD, each contain pre-compiled 
binaries of various GPL v2 software listed below (and possibly others):

 U-Boot-1.1.3
 BusyBox v1.00
 Linux 2.6.16.27

Inspection of the CD and printed docs shipped with the product contained no 
copy of GPL license, no corresponding source code for the GPL binaries, and 
no mail-order offer to obtain the source code. The product is therefore not 
compliant to the GPL license terms for this distribution.


Steps taken:
I contacted Digium licensing via email to make them aware of the problem. 
Digium (Justin McAteer) replied saying that he raised the issue with their 
product managers, and they accept it was an oversight on their part. He 
promised they would correct the situation for future shipments, and provided 
details of a part code which could be ordered by mail-order and download 
from svn.

I submitted a credit card order on 16th Dec, and sent a followup email to 
Justin on 9th Jan. No response from Digium was received.

Note: I elected to buy the CD rather than download the code from their 
archive, as per the gpl-violations.org FAQ the GPL license specifically 
requires mail-order availability. Offering the source code online is 
convenient but does not meet the requirements of the GPL license.


In my view Digium are still non-compliant to part 3 of the GPL, a written 
offer for mail-order source code. I have previously raised the Busybox and 
Uboot exposures to their respective teams. I post here for the Linux 
non-compliance.

thanks,
Iain


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Digium Licensing" <licensing at digium.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:21 PM
Subject: RE: Re: Re: Source code request [GPL non-compliance] [ 
ref:00D36mPe.500340lqw:ref ]


> Iain,
>
> Good news. We are making progress even faster than I anticipated.
>
> The source code for all open source components of the AA50 firmware can be
> found in our public AADK code repository at
> http://svn.digium.com/svn/aadk.
> This can be checked out using the open source Subversion tool. If you wish
> to browse the code instead, it is available at
> http://svn.digium.com/view/aadk.
>
> We are working to improve the contents of the companion CD included with
> the AA50 to reduce any possible confusion about the inclusion of GPL
> licensed software and to make it clear where the source code for that
> software may be obtained.
>
> We will be able to provide the materials on a physical medium as well.
> Requests should be direct to:
>
> Digium, Inc.
> Sales Department
> 445 Jan Davis Drive.
> Huntsville, AL 35806
>
> or e-mail:
> sales at digium.com
>
> and request part number:
> 8AA50GPLCD
>
> The cost for the medium is $1.00 plus shipping and handling charges ($20
> domestic and $50 international). Orders by e-mail to be paid by credit
> card.  Orders by mail to be paid by check drawn on a United States bank.
>
> Thank You,
> Justin McAteer
> Digium, Inc.