[asterisk-dev] Asterisk 1.6 Realtime Database must use ', ' not '|' in appdata field?

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Wednesday 28 May 2008 10:33:22 Steve Totaro wrote:
> On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 10:28 AM, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 07:41:28PM -0400, Donny Kavanagh wrote:
> >> Since you asked here is a quote from you
> >>
> >> <snip>
> >> Time for John Todd to step up to his new role.  Maybe keep Mr. Lesher in
> >> check.
> >
> > And that's an attack on which of those people?
>
> The only thing I can see being construed as a "personal attack" is
> "Maybe keep Mr. Lesher in check." but I feel he was not representing
> Digium properly.

Clearly, you've made many assumptions about this project that are incorrect.
One of those is that I represent Digium, that I tow the party line, that I say
what I am told to say.  I think if there's anything that this thread has
demonstrated, none of those are correct.

> Essentially, he was saying Digium's way or the highway, fork, go away,
> I don't care what your opinion or thoughts are...

I never told anybody to fork.  And I've never said that the way the developers
chose was Digium's way.  The development is controlled by the community of
developers, some of whom are full time paid employees of Digium and some of
whom are not.  Who is paying the developers figures very little into the
decisions made.  Yes, there are development projects that Digium directs me to
do; this was not one of them.  I made this decision (me, myself, NOT Digium)
that the dialplan needed a good bit of reform to make it easier to use in the
future (the amount of escaping that needed to be done was the primary reason).

Now my decision alone is not enough -- I simply made the decision to put
development effort into that project.  In fact, I discussed it on this list in
June and July 2007 (incidentally, BEFORE I was employed by Digium), and as a
result of those discussions, we proceeded.  I want to emphasize that the
discussions to make this change occurred here, in an open forum.

> Most organizations have an official spokesperson to handle situations
> like these and others are not really supposed to take official stands
> on sensitive issues.  I thought that was JT's role but he quickly
> corrected me.  Obviously Digium is not that structured which is good
> to an extent and bad to a further extent, more quality devs will move
> over to Callweaver just stop developing or signing over their code to
> Digium if this is the case.

Which developers, specifically, are contributing to Asterisk today, who might
feel that this change merits abandoning this project?  To date, I have heard
on this list from 3 vocal users, who to the best of my knowledge haven't
contributed a single line of documentation or code back to the Asterisk open
source project.  If that characterization is incorrect, please let us all
know.

And here is another assumption that you've made, that Digium is somehow
in control of the project.  The people who are actually doing the development
work are the people who are in control of the project.  You might consider
Digium in the role of a benevolent sponsor, who sees Asterisk development as
a public good and contributes funds towards that end.

> I don't think it is wise to have a developer crossing into a spokesman
> position when that is not his job.  Speak to the merits of why the
> decision was made only, do not imply directly or indirectly that
> developer's and user's opinions and thoughts are going to /dev/null
> (even if they are).

I am not a spokesperson, and it is not my job to tow the company line.  I
state my opinions, as an experienced developer of the project, as I always
have, and I probably will continue to do.  I don't wish to belabor the point,
but I have a long track record of development on Asterisk, most of which
was performed prior to my employment with Digium.  When I changed jobs,
my opinions did not change, I did not alter the way I interacted with this
list, and my eye color stayed the same.  In short, I'm the same person as
always.

> Tilghman was directly showing through his posts the opposite of what
> JT stated was his position and therefore Digium's position.  Mixed
> signals from a company are a very bad thing, they should be on the
> same page and have the same philosophy.  Maybe a big mission statement
> banner might help!

Clearly, what I post is independent of the company for which I work!

-- 
Tilghman