Fwd: Re: [Asterisk-Users] *** Asterisk Sunday News: Gone Fishing...

[Stuart Grimshaw]

> On Sun, 30 May 2004 21:34:27 +0200, Olle E. Johansson <oej at edvina.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Philipp von Klitzing wrote:
>>
>>>> more stable/usable (eg, fewer bugs) then is Stable. As previously
>>>> stated, its time to lock down Head, fix the few remaining bugs, and
>>>> make "it" the well-overdue & historic v1.0 production release.
>>>   Might indeed by the better approach. However, will this same problem
>>> occur over and over again, so that in the end we are effectively still
>>> at a single-stream asterisk code system?
>>
>> It depends if we can find a group of developers that are willing to
>> maintain
>> a release for a period of time, while the rest are exploring new
>> frontiers.
>>
>> I really think there needs to be a release-team that manages the code  
>> and
>> inserts bug fixes so we can not only release a stable, but keep that
>> release stable for a while and only add security/stability fixes.
>

Hi, My name is Stuart Grimshaw, a new (and very impressed) user of
Asterisk, I'm also a Senior Developer for a large UK online retailer, as
well as having recently held the same position for one of the UK's leading
ISP's.

  From the threads I have read, and in particular this one, I see a project
that is at a crossroads. One way leads to bickering, endless arguments and
a shattered codebase. The other leads to harmony amongst the developers,
a well planned and organised codebase and release/development cycle.
Dedicated teams focused on their job in hand, be that developing new
features or merging bug fixes into older versions of the software. Down
one road lies XFree, the other leads to XOrg, one road is phpGroupWare,
the other lies eGroupWare.

There needs to be leadership, someone with vision who can steer the teams
in the right direction, Asterisk needs a Linus Torvalds, and a couple of
Alan Cox's. It needs a Daniel Robbins.

There should to be two teams, one that concentrates on the stable version
and one that develops the new features, there's no reason why people
can't be on both teams, indeed the stable version needs that otherwise how
will people know which patches need to be applied. I would create a new
stable release right now, call it STABLE_1_1

Most importantly, I would stop encouraging people to use the HEAD branch,
leave that for those who want to test new features, who understand that
it's unstable, guide new users toward the stable release. Build some
packages, advertise the packages, don't require people to use CVS to get
hold of releases.

This will have numerous benefits, users will report bugs in the stable
branch, at the moment no-one seems to know what is still broken in the
stable branch, other than the individuals who made the patches, these bugs
will get fixed, and new ones will not be introduced by people upgrading
to the latest HEAD branch, they will get the latest version of stable and
it will fix their problem, without introducing a whole bunch of new ones.
It
also means that bugs being re-introduced into CVS wont effect people (See
Thor Atle Rustad's post from yesterday "Unblocking incoming SIP"

I hope people understand what this email is about, it's about helping
people think what they have, about encouraging people to take a lead, and
hopefully avoid the pitfalls of so many other great OpenSource projects.
I've purposely avoided using language that is preaching or sounds like I'm
telling people the best way to do things, and any paragraph that does so
is purely unintentional.

I really would like to help the Asterisk effort, and I hope people take
these comments on board.

I've also sent this mail twice, as I sent it from an email address that
isn't subscribed to this list originally.

-- 

-S