[Asterisk-Users] $200 AMP documentation bounty

[Jason Becker]

dean collins wrote:
> There is a $200 bounty for helping document a step by step guide to AMP, 
> anyone on this list interested in making easy money feel free to contact me.

I want to thank Dean for giving me this opportunity to address some of 
the concerns raised in regards to AMP.

AMP began as a value-add to a _small business_ turn-key solution. We 
felt strongly that in order to approach small businesses with our 
integrated solution we needed a GUI administration interface that 
handled the mundane. When we looked at what was available circa 
Feb/March of this year we realized that we would be better off writing 
it ourselves. Most of the other (freely available) candidates still 
appear to me to be thin wrappers to the configuration files that require 
the end user to have a knowledge of Asterisk and programming logic. From 
the outset, AMP - or more specifically our piece that allows for setup 
of extensions, IVRs, etc. - was designed so that an Office Manager of a 
small business could use it for the day-to-day operational stuff.

It's clear to me that our design goal has resulted in the attention of 
people whose expertise does not extend to the Linux/UNIX world. I 
personally am thrilled at this. I also understand the frustration these 
people must feel when met with the INSTALL instructions. We know that if 
a person has software installation / development experience on Linux 
that a fully functioning AMP can be installed in a couple hours. We 
cannot take responsibility for the Linux learning curve. As one poster 
to this thread commented, "the best way to overcome it is to take a 
crash course in general Linux admin". I think this is good advice for 
the time being until we find a solution to the problem of providing the 
user base with well-written documentation.

As to the specifics of providing the said documentation I am open to 
suggestions. Open source economics make it challenging for the software 
provider to also provide the other elements of a mature product. 
Elements like documentation and training. In fact, part of the reason we 
open sourced our piece of AMP was so that we could solicit help from the 
  Asterisk community to service this need. asteriskdocs.org was a 
suggestion. We, Coalescent Systems, would also consider hiring a 
professional technical writer if we can ensure that the demand for 
documentation was significant and that purchase of the documentation 
(ala JBoss' model) would support the paid position.

AMP is still targeted towards the small office and small business. I 
think we have made that very clear on the AMP homepage:

http://amp.voxbox.ca

In short, AMP, by design, limits the feature set of Asterisk and is 
intended for small office and small business use. It does NOT align well 
with the needs of larger organizations and is not suited for use in 
those environments. If Gregory Junker et al. want to design a 
"standalone, cross-platform" alternative I applaud their initiative.

Finally, I want to thank everyone that has shown an interest in AMP and 
Coalescent Systems.

Regards,

-- 
Jason Becker
Director & CEO
Coalescent Systems Inc.
403.244.8089
www.coalescentsystems.ca