[asterisk-dev] Viva Chan_Sip, may it rest in peace

[Bruce Ferrell]

On 10/04/2016 05:46 PM, James Finstrom wrote:
> So the discussion of deprecating chan_sip came up at the devcon this year and it caused a bit of a stir. The end result was the need for broader discussion with a wider
> audience.  So let's discuss. 
>
> Currently, Asterisk is running dual sip stacks. The argument is that to deprecate PJSIP there must be broader adoption. There is currently nothing motivating adoption but much
> slowing it. 
>
> What are some of the hurdles to adoption?
> 1. Apathy.  If it ain't broke don't fix it. Many would argue chan_sip is broke but it is the "devil you know". A decade of documentation and a broad user base allows people to be
> pretty forgiving of flaws. Almost any issue has some sort of work around or generally accepted idea of I guess we can live with it.
>
> 2. One Ring to rule them all!!  PJSIP requires up to 6 sections of configuration. Once you dig in, this method makes sense. But at a glance, you have just multiplied the workload
> to  6 times that of chan_sip's single blob config. Though it is not really 600% more effort it may be enough to scare some away
>
> 3. Mo Adoption, Mo problems!
> The only way to clean up all the edge cases and weird bugs is to hit them in the first place.  Dogfooding only gets you so far.  You can make anything working clean in a single
> environment and single use case. But what happens when people start flinging wrenches. Things break. 100 wrenches may break 10 things. 1000 wrenches may break 100 things.  In the
> ladder case, you have 100 people saying pjsip sucks, and pjsip is crap. As with all things the 900 assume all is good and move on with their lives telling no one of their glory.
> So you have 10% of the voices running unopposed. You fix the 100 issues and that is great but those 100 people have gone back to the comfort of chan_sip and are stuck at point 1.
>
> Escaping the cycle.
>
> So how do we dredge through this mess and get high adoption? 
>
> You have to make #1 not an option.  This means potentially breaking the universe. This is why I think there is a tendency to be gunshy. No one wants to be the guy who broke the
> universe.  But breaking the universe gets us to #3 without falling back into #1.   Once The universe breaks and we are in #3 many of the edges will be found and fixed. Suddenly
> PJSIP becomes usable in most, if not all situations. The issues in #2 will automatically resolve as there is more information and it becomes the "accepted way" of doing things. 
> The old dogs will have to refactor how they do configuration but I am confident once they do a few they will figure out the bark is bigger than the bite. 
>
> tl;dr to get adoption you have to force it.  There will be blood, but nothing that can't be cleaned up with a little bleach and some elbow grease 
>
> -- 
> James 
>

Forcing adoption IS one simplistic approach to getting wide adoption. 

Were Asterisk a toy, not widely in use, that kind of simple approach might make sense.  Asterisk is however NOT a toy.  Asterisk IS in wide use for peoples livelihood.  "A little
bleach" might also read "possible loss of business for others"... And that cavalier thought process towards those failures might well benefit from a much closer look.

Another method is showing a clear and persuasive benefit. Might it be possible that such a benefit isn't actually there, beyond a certain "academic" mindset?

Impatience NEVER benefits anyone.