After quite some searching, I’ve seen somewhat cryptic references to an open source package that was subsequently determined to be in violation of copyright, even though the technology patent expired. Is this referring to BCG729? I had a running system on Asterisk 11 using BCG729 on Arm, and I see that BCG729 is bundled in PJSIP, but I don’t see any way to build it into Asterisk. Asterisk configure appears to have dropped the --with-bcg729 switch. Even if I wanted to pay for the Digium software I assume it won’t run (well) on Arm.
I would love to bring the system up-to-date but I can’t see a path forward at this point. I’m surprised I haven’t turned up anything conclusive as I suspect it’s a commonly used configuration.
There is a third party implementation of G.729, which was originally based on code from Intel, which has a no commercial use restriction. The version that uses the Intel code cannot be licensed under GPL, which forbids field of endeavour restrictions, and as that was the only licence in use, there was no remaining valid licence.
I think they may produced a version with their own implementation, which might be safe.
In any case, the Intel code is partly there as a demonstration of Intel processors, so either won’t work well, or won’t work at all, on ARM (it might include inline assembler).
If I remember correctly, it was distributed from Latvia.
I very much doubt there is a build option for it in the official source code.
Thanks for the comment on the background, David. My main concern is knowing if there is a path forward for getting G729 working once again, using (the non-deprecated) pjsip.
This application is non-commercial. I had my company on Asterisk for several years, but they’ve since moved on, as have I
