[Asterisk-Dev] Features requests on bugs.digium.com

[Lee Howard]

On 2004.12.31 06:05 Darren Nickerson wrote:

> I think the aggressive closing of bugs, and rejection of feature 
> requests has already had an impact on Asterisk, and will hinder it 
> significantly in the long run.

If it's worth anything to anyone, I agree with Darren on this.  Allow 
me to take it a step further, though.  I've watched Asterisk project 
behavior rather closely in the last year, and I know that the handling 
of issues on the bug tracker (with the focus on closing reports rather 
than improving the project) has had a negative impact on Asterisk and 
has hindered it significantly from where it should be with an active 
project with a community the size of Asterisk's.  There are other 
factors which I feel have likewise impacted Asterisk negatively, but 
since we're on the topic of the bug tracker, I'll stay on topic.

> Don't get hung up on the word 'bug'. Think of them as issues.

Exactly.  Bug reports cannot be viewed as "errors" or "failures" in 
every single case.  A bug report is an item that deserves attention and 
probably deserves some action, whether it be in the form of a code fix, 
a code enhancement, a new utility, or "just" improved documentation.  
Understand that the reporter took the time to fill out the bug report 
and to go through the work of responding to various requests and 
tests.  If the report is abruptly closed as "not our problem" then 
Asterisk has missed out on opportunity to improve in the eyes of at 
least one person and inevitably many more just like him.  If nobody is 
going to address the issue immediately, then fine, put it away on a 
to-do list for when someone with some time and talent wants to make the 
project better.

I'll give an example, and I hope that it's not a trite one, but because 
I'm involved with faxing so much it's the one I'll choose to use.

Some time ago a friend of mine filed a bug report that Zap's faxdetect 
wasn't detecting incoming faxes from certain kinds of fax machines.  
Personally I'm not a strong believer in automatic fax detection because 
inevitably it fails with some fax machine or another, especially the 
(nowadays few) analog kind that are "listening" for ringback rather 
than "beeping" some tones.  However, my friend does use faxdetect, and 
he uses it somewhat religiously for his own purposes.  And, inevitably 
he encountered a number of fax machines that weren't detected as such 
by faxdetect.  So what did he do?  He filed a bug report with Asterisk, 
of course.  And then he went through the process of interacting with 
the bug marshals, running tests, attaching traces, etc.  And in the end 
it was determined that these fax machines weren't making the "proper" 
and normal fax tones that are expected.  (If that wasn't already 
obvious enough.)  And because the tones weren't "proper" the issue was 
determined to be "not Asterisk's problem", and the report was closed at 
that.

Now, I wonder what we expect my friend to do.  Stop using faxdetect?  
Harrass these fax machine manufacturers into producing a fix and 
replacing these people's fax machines?  Tell the fax machine user to 
get a different kind of fax machine?  Well, none of these really are 
viable solutions.  Understand that the opinion of the fax sender is 
always, "I can send faxes to everyone else without any problem.  It's 
not my fault you can't get them.  Maybe I should just avoid this 
headache by not doing business with you."  That the fax machine could 
be detected is clear, so it's not really a technical problem where this 
fax machine is getting mistaken as my Aunt Mabel's squeaky voice.  In 
this case it ended up appearing to be a choice made that Asterisk will 
not ever support faxdetect for these fax machines.  And of course, my 
friend doesn't want to lose his customer, and so he sets up a different 
faxing route for them, certainly without faxdetect, possibly without 
Asterisk.  And this "selective stagnation" is where Asterisk is being 
impacted.

If, on the other hand, my friend had developed a patch to Asterisk 
which would have permitted the detection of these fax machines, then 
I'm most certain that it would have been readily accepted into CVS 
without any arguments about it supporting "broken" fax machines.  So it 
seems to be a double-standard: happy to allow code contributions, but 
not happy to admit contributions of mere observation.  Maybe I'm wrong 
in this assumption, but to make sense of this double-standard I had 
merely assumed that the handling of the bug tracker was done under 
Digium's eye, and thus it was Digium's business interests that were at 
play in the decision making on the bug tracker, that those of us who 
disagreed with the handling of the bug tracker should set up our own 
bug tracker, and that we should maintain our own fork, if we dare.  
But, maybe I'm just looking for conspiracy where there isn't one.  
Maybe there is no reason behind the madness.

If the goal is world domination you cannot selectively avoid appealing 
to some of those who would choose to use Asterisk.

Lee.