Linux-Based Phone System Phones Home

An anonymous reader writes to let us know that users of Trixbox, a PBX based on Asterisk, recently discovered that the software has been phoning home with statistics about their installations. It's easy enough to disable, and not particularly steathy (beyond encrypting the data sent back), but customers in the forum are annoyed at not having been informed of the reporting. Trixbox is owned by Fonality, which makes customized PBXs (again based on Asterisk) for paying customers.

Comments

Linus is right

[Anonymous Coward]

I am with Linus on this one.
His position is very clear and makes a lot of sense.

First Paul!

[Anonymous Coward]

Donate to Ron Paul today. 3.5 hours left.

Re:First Paul!

[Harmonious Botch]

Donate to Ron Paul today. 3.5 hours left. Actually, there are more hours than that left. Due to time zones they are counting several hours either side of Sunday EST. So it will still be tea party day in Hawaii for another 6.5 hours.

Maybe the license is just too oppressive

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello,

Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on
Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do
some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was
very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our
exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.

Although we met several technical challenges along the way
(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we
were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process
went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were
considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.

So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that
we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It
was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something
called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license
states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available.
Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money
we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would
now be available at no cost to our competitors.

Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any
products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to
its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.

Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no
option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.

I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive
with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually
guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my
experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my
associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to
something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".
Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure
it remains only a bit player.

Thank you for your time.

Re:ET...

[kcbanner]

I know, I have "Bad" karma lately, I've been making all these funny, interesting, and generally awesome posts, yet my Karma hasn't improved. I just don't understand it!