[asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon - PineMango

[Brian Degenhardt]

Nir Simionovich wrote:
> bmd:
>>Nir Simionovich wrote:
>>> I know for fact that carriers in Israel hadn't adopted Asterisk fully
>>> due to its lack of RADIUS/DIAMETER support.
> 
>>Before we can begin on this project, we need to change the way we think
>>about Asterisk.  Asterisk doesn't have perl, python, ruby, .Net, ftp,
>>smtp, POP3, pam, firefox, MS Word, Outlook, Exchange, SalesForce.com,
>>SugarCRM, 37signals, Google Docs, Excel, or Facebook support either.
> 
> Ok, I may be a little thick here, but I fail to see the relation between
> RADIUS/DIAMETER and the application layers you had specified. It is one 
> thing to be compatible and using RADIUS/DIAMETER as your AA providers,
> and being integrated with high-level applications like Firefox, Word or

Because if you have an API, you can do the RADIUS authentication outside
of Asterisk.  Use ruby/perl/python/PHP/whatever's RADIUS library and
hack it up in 10 minutes.  I never want to hear somebody say "Asterisk
doesn't support X" unless X is a codec or a protocol or something that
has to be in the core.

You'll never hear somebody saying, "Rails doesn't support RADIUS",
because there's the ruby-radius bindings and it's trivial to glue the
two together.

>>There's two ways to fix this:
> 
>>1) Fire up vi and write it all in C as a module for Asterisk.  This has
>>been the traditional approach, and the various features in Asterisk done
>>this way are testaments to the efforts and vitality of the community.  I
>>just happen to believe it's the wrong way to do it.
> 
> I think we agree on the above.
> 
>>2) Give Asterisk a flexible programming API such that this functionality
>>can be done outside of Asterisk in a development framework.  Apache +
>>Rails is a great example of this.  Does Rails diminish the importance of
>>Apache?  It does a bit, but imagine how diminished Apache would be if
>>you couldn't use Rails with it because it didn't expose enough of an API.
> 
> I think we also agree on the above, too.
> 
> However, there is a high difference between providing a high-level, rails
> type API for Asterisk - which will be used primarily for Voice Application
> development (at least as much as I can look at it) and providing an AA API
> for allowing people to develop pluggable AA modules. 

I mostly agree.  I just want to make two points:

1) Since there is this high difference, I want to be very clear that AA
is not a part PineMango.  I just want to focus our scope on what we want
to do.

2) Don't sell the API short, it's not just for voice applications, it's
for anything you'd want to use Asterisk for.  Just because mod_perl and
CGI are mostly used for the same purpose, doesn't mean that mod_perl
isn't capable if way more.  I want that for Asterisk.


cheers
-bmd