[asterisk-dev] [Re] chan_skinny development

[Damien]

I am sending this to both chan-sccp-b and asterisk-dev lists in response 
to post on chan-sccp-b (sf.net). Apologies for this, but it is a rather 
fragmented development community.

There are some serious issues impacting on skinny/sccp development. 
Personally I am for development of chan_skinny, purely because it is 
part of the asterisk code base and so we will generally not have the 
issues like the problems with chan_sccp and asterisk 1.4.

However, that said, if the asterisk maintainers do wish to restrict 
functionality to allow for the most commonality between device types, 
then I am of the opinion that it needs to be built outside of the 
asterisk code base and we deal with the problems as they arise.

Regarding shared lines, there is a significant difference between SLA 
and shared lines in skinny. SLA, as I understand it is simply sending a 
message to another device (through asterisk) that a line is in use. 
Shared lines ala skinny/sccp is a real shared line. One must remember 
that the likes of sip/iax are really trunking protocols with some 
additional stuff over the top. Skinny is a real pabx protocol. Basically 
the difference is that chan_skinny/sccp knows every button press, 
action, item displayed on the skinny phones etc, whereas other chans 
know only limited information on what their devices are doing and it is 
up to the device to give that information to the driver (asterisk).

I am not trying to bag the other protocols, I would just like to be able 
to develop chan_skinny to its own maximum potential rather than limiting 
its functionality to a lowest common denominator.

Is someone interested in setting up a skinny development branch and 
looking after the general housekeeping while we work on shared lines and 
other functionality. Would digium be willing to set up a skinny-dev list 
temporarily or is the community happy if we make a skinny-dev mailing 
list offsite for a while? Or do the developers want a whole bunch of 
skinny debugs in their mailboxes everyday ;)

I suppose first things first, how many people are actually interested in 
developing chan_skinny or chan_sccp?

Damien