14 thoughts on - Asterisk CLI Banner

• Am 28.03.2014 10:32, schrieb Haider Khalil:

  Hi,

  did you compile asterisk from source? Take a look at main/asterisk.c
  (line 174 in asterisk v 11.5.1). I think you have to change it there manually and recompile it.

  -Thorsten-

• Please note that modifying the banner in main/asterisk.c may cause you to violate the licensing of Asterisk, specifically Section 1 of the GPL (if you distribute the modified source in any fashion) and/or Section 2c.

  Unless you really know what you’re doing with regards to software licensing, I would highly suggest not modifying the welcome message.

• Thank you Thorsten G

• Anyone *can* change the code. But it’s licensed software, just like most other software. The difference is that the GPL gives you rights that you don’t have for other non-open software. However, in both cases, you have to be sure that you don’t violate the terms of the license.

  If you’re unclear as to whether what you propose to do will violate the license, I’d suggest consulting an attorney: nobody on this list (or any other) should be providing you legal advice.

• Nothing, *unless* you plan to distribute it.

  Modifying a program you have legitimately acquired is Fair Dealing. The Law of the Land gives you the right to do that, even if the vendor restricts your exercise of that right in practice by withholding the Source Code.

• asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com wrote on 03/28/2014 10:51:13 AM:

  I am neither a lawyer or a licensing expert, but the basics are that if you make such a change for your own internal use, you are probably fine. Example: You have 10 sites with Asterisk in them and at each site you have someone in your company who has to log into the CLI and do stuff. You change the header to pass them a message. This is probably (not going to guarantee this) going to be fine as it is not something you are releasing out into the wild nor are you selling it and making a profit from it.

  However, let’s say you make a commercial project that uses Asterisk under the hood and you change the header to hide the fact that it uses Asterisk and that Digium has any ownership of the code. That would be not be okay in most, if not all cases.

  Basically, the code is open source, but it is still owned by Digium and they have specific rights that you have to be careful of in regards to licensing. If someone outside of your organization will ever be running the code you change, there are specific rules that have to be followed, including those that relate to releasing your changes to the code and to giving credit back to those who wrote the code your code is based on.

  Basically, Richard Kenner is spot on. If you are unclear, best to consult an attorney who specializes in this, especially if you are redistributing the altered code.

• Thank you so much everyone, I think I understand all I need for this. Haider

  To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com From: kevin.larsen@pioneerballoon.com Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 11:18:16 -0500
  Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Asterisk CLI Banner

  asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com wrote on 03/28/2014
  10:51:13 AM:

  I am neither a lawyer or a licensing expert, but the basics are that if you make such a change for your own internal use, you are probably fine.

  Example: You have 10 sites with Asterisk in them and at each site you have someone in your company who has to log into the CLI
  and do stuff. You change the header to pass them a message. This is probably
  (not going to guarantee this) going to be fine as it is not something you are releasing out into the wild nor are you selling it and making a profit from it.

  However, let’s say you make a commercial project that uses Asterisk under the hood and you change the header to hide the fact that it uses Asterisk and that Digium has any ownership of the code. That would be not be okay in most, if not all cases.

  Basically, the code is open source, but it is still owned by Digium and they have specific rights that you have to be careful of in regards to licensing. If someone outside of your organization will ever be running the code you change, there are specific rules that have to be followed, including those that relate to releasing your changes to the code and to giving credit back to those who wrote the code your code is based on.

  Basically, Richard Kenner is spot on. If you are unclear, best to consult an attorney who specializes in this, especially if you are redistributing the altered code.
  —

• That is false. Modifying a program is “creating a derivative work”. As purchaser of a copyrighted item, you normally *do not* have that right.

  And this certainly may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. For a
  (quite dated at this point) discussion of this issue from a US perspective, see

  http://www.law.berkeley.edu/php-programs/faculty/facultyPubsPDF.php?facID46&pubID7

  The author is a recognized expert in software IP law.

• Richard Kenner wrote:
  Of course, any good attorney will never commit to anything. They will never say it is alright to do X, unless X is do nothing

  Patent & copyright attorneys seem especially non committal, at least in the US. probably because if any case ever goes to court, the decision and possible punishment is up to the whims of the judge and/or jury, and every law is up to interpretation, which can vary from moment to moment.

  Law is not physics!

  John Novack

• No, but a good attorney can give guidance as to likely expectations. As you say, nobody can be sure of something even if it’s previously been
  “established law”, but a good attorney can point out potential pitfalls on the one hand and identify, on the other, things that are much less likely to be an issue. It’s not a guarantee, but you can often get a recommendation about whether or not it’s a good idea (not necessarily
  “alright”) to do something.

  Attorneys often have to a take a stand on these matters. If a company needs to use software that performs a specific thing and, say, only three companies provide such, but under different licensing terms, it’s the job of that company’s legal department to say which, if any, they can be used.
  “Doing nothing” will have a cost and risk here too because this example is talking about something that the company needs done.

• The publication (43 pages) is dated 1988. The DMCA (1998) and subsequent legislation may have changed the landscape.

  My (ignorant) opinion — just don’t. Is it worth the effort to research?
  Is it worth paying a lawyer to research it and give an opinion that may be worth nothing until it is examined in court?

  If you want to display something custom, how about a ‘wrapper’ script that displays a file using ‘curl’ before handing off to Asterisk — easier to implement, easier to maintain, no legal BS to consider.

  Or can you express your creativity by fiddling with ASTERISK_PROMPT?

• If you really want to do it:

  1) create a wrapper to asterisk -r
  2) pipe the welcome message to /dev/null
  3) ???
  4) profit

  you didn’t modify Asterisk.

• No you didn’t, but you may neverthess have created a derived work. There are two different legal arguments you can make when two pieces of software are tightly coupled in that way: one argues that it’s a derived work and the other that it’s not.

  Copyright law when it comes to software is not simple and certainly not obvious. If you want to use a piece of Free Software in a commercial product, you need to consult an attorney. It’s really that simple.

• Or use cotrib/scripts/astcli (which uses the manager interface).

  And you still have ‘core show version’ and ‘core show
  {license|copyright}’.

  #include
  #include

  The license does not require you to show that specific notice. But it requires you to show the copyright notice in the place where the user would expect it. The users MUST be aware of their legal right. In a GUI
  program, you’d put that notice in help => about and not necessarily in the startup banner (even if you have one).

  That said, I would not go changing it unless it had caused a real technical difficulty.