* Pingtel to license IP PBX call control platform to LGPL
A move by IP telephony vendor Pingtel could be a boon to enterprises interested in deploying VoIP systems based on open source software and server platforms, like Linux.
That’s because Pingtel this week is releasing its entire software stack to the open source community. Pingtel will license its IP PBX call control platform, which runs on Linux, as well as its APIs, softphone applications, and IP handset firmware code under the Library General Public License, or LGPL. (The LGPL allows software code to run on proprietary systems, while the GPL allows code to be used only with systems written for the GPL.)
Founded in 1999, Pingtel is a Woburn, Mass., vendor of IP telephony hardware and software. The company has been actively promoting products based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a real-time IETF communications protocol for carrying session-based traffic over IP, such as voice, video or instant messaging. The company is known as a niche player in the emerging VoIP market, and its express SIP-based IP phone is used by several VoIP service providers.
Pingtel CEO Bill Rich is changing the company’s business model to a more open-source approach.
“Similar to Red Hat’s business model,” he says. Starting this month, Pingtel will make the code for its IP telephony software freely available for download. Where it plans to make money is on services, support and integration.
“This will let people interested in our technology get access to it and build on it if they want,” he says. Businesses that want to deploy a Pingtel-based phone system would get a CD complete with all software and a modified Linux distribution. They would also pay a yearly support charge of between $700 and $1,000 per processor for using the software in production.
