[Freeswitch-users] Announcement: Howler-optimised G.729A Solution for FreeSWITCH

[Will Boyce]

Hey David,

>> There doesn't seem to be any direct link between FreeSWITCH and  
>> Howler.
>> How does this benefit the project? Can we assume that Howler is  
>> "giving
>> something back"?
>
> Well, they're providing additional functionality which a lot of folk
> want, which requires substantial investment in money (visit sipro.com
> and have a look at the up-front license fees if you wish) and time (to
> get the thing working across the various platforms with the required
> licensing) and they've presumably taken a commercial risk so to do.
>
> Hats off to them: they've taken a risk, and the project benefits
> immensely from it.  Expecting them to "give something back" in  
> addition
> would be entirely unreasonable.

You're spot on on the somewhat extortionate up-front (and continuing royalty) fees, and there is substantial risk in us doing this which we hope will be mitigated by the rising interest in FreeSWITCH as a whole (a project which we've been huge evangelists of since the beginning).

We hope that adding patent encumbered codecs like G.729 to FreeSWITCH will ultimately benefit the project and cause more people to be able to transition towards it from other platforms, building on the fantastic platform that Anthony and the rest of the gang have somehow managed to develop for free!

Our initial feedback has been very promising, with a number of customers at least in the UK (including one major VoIP provider) that we've spoken to directly now seriously considering a migration to FreeSWITCH.

We hope that the small per channel charge is not too onerous - we've tried to make it as cheap as possible by introducing the floating licenses (and including all support and maintenance upgrades free of charge), but there are very real costs here in royalties and development - how you guys do it mostly for free is beyond me!

We have, of course, spoken to the FreeSWITCH team and offered to collaborate on this project (as they've also been working on this for a while) and we hope that we can join forces on it soon so that everyone benefits :)

--
Regards,

Jay Fenton, CTO <jay.fenton at howlertech.com> c/o Will Boyce
Howler Technologies Ltd, 11 Charlotte Mews, London, W1T 4EQ
tel: +44 207 099 7095 fax: +44 207 099 7098
http://www.howlertech.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jfenton