For the record, there’s no great black magic to this. An outgoing call file is created pointing to a dialplan context that uses the FAXOPT function to set things up and SendFax application to send the actual fax. After the initial setup, sending a fax can be done manually in a minute or two; you could automate with cron to check the mailbox, parse out receiver information and the attachment, convert the file format if needed, provide feedback, etc.
I’ll do up a post once I muddle my way through it. I think I could come up with some fine suggestions for any American lawyers that have a problem with a forum posting.
Research store and forward which is what you are referring to. All I know is any concept of a fax being stored and forward is patented and the concept of a email being converted to fax and sent automatically is patented. Heck print to fax is the last time I checked a few years ago.
I don’t for a minute doubt what you’re saying about the potential for legal problems, especially in USA where patent trolls seem to be all the rage. However, there’s the question of whether that potential translates into a real threat. If it did, I suspect FreePBX would not exist in any fashion we would recognize, as just about every function FreePBX and Asterisk provide are covered by one or more patents.
That’s why I was asking where this patent was valid. Because as far as I know (and I’m certainly no expert) the copyright laws in the U.S. are ridiculously messed up beyond any hope (See Apple vs. Samsung on rounded buttons lol).
For example, look at Figure 3 in US7454009. How does something like that even pass scrutiny? I guess they violated someone elses patent on how you may depict a box when drawing the this…
Rant aside, I think it depends on the methodology that is used to implement a certain feature (most of the time). For example, Cisco stole VRRP developed together with open source, and then *BSD devs did the same thing in a different way with CARP.