[asterisk-dev] Asterisk 1.6 Realtime Database must use ', ' not '|'

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 10:33:03AM -0500, Tilghman Lesher wrote:
> On Friday 23 May 2008 09:34:54 Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 08:13:16AM -0500, Tilghman Lesher wrote:
> > > On Friday 23 May 2008 07:38:10 Ward Mundy wrote:
> > > > This is another example of how something that may appear to developers
> > > > to be trivial has enormous negative consequences to those actually
> > > > using Asterisk to do 'real work.' This one change breaks dialplan code
> > > > for every AGI function call. For organizations with elaborate custom
> > > > dialplans, this is expensive to fix particularly if some outside
> > > > company (that's no longer around) wrote their dialplans. What is so
> > > > difficult about supporting BOTH the comma and vertical bar as
> > > > delimiters? The argument always has been that some of these changes
> > > > were necessary to improve the performance of Asterisk. Not sure that
> > > > holds water this time around.
> > >
> > > Why don't you suggest a patch, and we'll look at it the same way we look
> > > at any other patch -- on its merits?
> >
> > I'm not sure that's a valid response.
> 
> The fact is that we made a change that will make adopting Asterisk easier in
> the future,

{{citation-needed}}

I'd already *just asked* for the *actual* justification, Tilghman; is
there any reason you didn't see fit to just provide it, instead of
continuing to wave the flag?

This conversation is starting to get awfully strategic; is it heading
up above your paygrade?

>                                                      Any change is going to
> piss out a few users; if I was going for pissing off no users, at the expense
> of losing new users who find the syntax arcane and difficult to master, we'd
> make no changes at all.  I'm sorry, but we make advancements all the time in
> the name of making Asterisk easier to use, and we're better off for it.

The audience for that particular change is *not* an untechnical
audience; that doesn't seem like a valid justification to me.

> This is an open source ecosystem.  If you have a problem with one of these
> advancements, then it's incumbent upon you to point it out, and, if the change
> is seen to be justified by the developers, then you can either propose
> alternate code or accept what was changed.  Remember, meritocracy, not
> democracy.  The quality of the code that you contribute is what has the vote,
> not how big of a bully pulpit you can manage.

That paragraph may be the beginning of the end...

> > Digium, presumably, was responsible for the patch which changed the
> > behaviour.  So if lots of users are coming back and saying "your patch
> > breaks my investment of work", it seems incumbent on you to justify why
> > it went in, rather than incumbent on the users to figure out how to
> > back it out.
> 
> I hear from more users who are happy with the changes than are opposed
> to the changes.  Even if this were a democracy instead of a meritocracy
> (which it isn't), that still doesn't point to us needing to make a change.

No, you hear, according to your comments above, from more *prospective
users* who are happy.

> > We've got almost 3000 lines of dialplan here (running on 18
> > machines)... though this particular issue won't hit us immediately,
> > since (unless there's flash news I missed) 1.4 won't even run VICIdial
> > reliably yet, much less 1.6.  :-)
> 
> Yes, but we don't support third party apps.  If you have a problem with a
> third party app, you need to talk to that third party developer.

Immaterial to my argument above, but I'm sure Matt's hanging bugs where
he finds them.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com                     '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274

	     Those who cast the vote decide nothing.
	     Those who count the vote decide everything.
	       -- (Joseph Stalin)