[asterisk-users] Re: Asterisk Faxing Support

[Craig Guy]

It's not that Digium don't want fax or t.38 support, it's just that it is 
not very likely for Steve Underwood to provide it for Asterisk.  I'm sure 
that Digium are very keen for someone to write and contribute t.38 code for 
Asterisk, it's just that there aren't very many people with the required 
knowledge and willingness to contribute in that area.

The reasons are sorta complex, but as I understand it there are two issues. 
Spandsp will not be included in Asterisk as Steve will not disclaim the it 
to Digium, preferring to keep his code under GPL.  Likewise, Digium won't 
accept code that isn't disclaimed - Spandsp could never be included in ABE 
for example without a disclaimer and it wouldn't make business sense for 
Digium to have code in the free distribution that can't be in their 
commercial distribution.

The second issue is that it is often very difficult to have code accepted 
into trunk.  An example of this is the t.38 related code that Steve was 
working on for Asterisk in late 2005.  Whilst not directly spandsp, these 
were backend changes inside asterisk that were required in order to 
interface t.38 into asterisk.  Eventually he gave up and is now focussing 
his efforts on openpbx which is pure gpl and is easier to get code into 
trunk, so sort of a path of least resistance - why try to get code into 
asterisk when it is easier to get it into the fork.

Fow now, it is easiest to use hylafax / spandsp with asterisk.  The majority 
of the hard work has been done and Lee Howard is very responsive to user 
queries.

Anyhow, thats my understanding and I could be way off the mark.

Craig

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Patrick" <asterisk-list at puzzled.xs4all.nl>
To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" 
<asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 10:42 PM
Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Re: Asterisk Faxing Support


> On Thu, 2007-02-08 at 13:55 +0100, Tomislav Parčina wrote:
>> In article <23fd749a0702050057l24216509yb87879ba8c48f676 at mail.gmail.com>, 
>> joakimsen at gmail.com says...
>> > Asterisk 1.2 has no support of t.38 whatsoever, the call will drop
>> > before t.38 is ever utilised, not even pass-thru.
>> >
>> > 1.4 Adds support for T.38 pass through only and no other sort of
>> > faxing, the endpoint must support T.38 and you must send your call to
>> > a T.38 gateway and you must not use NAT anywhere in  your network and
>> > you must enable re-invites which could cause CDRs not to reflect the
>> > true details of the call.
>> >
>> > Asterisk/Digium also has no interest in any further interest in
>> > expanding T.38 or faxing support in Asterisk.
>> >
>> > Steve Underwood and the other fine persons that have helped to develop
>> > the software DSPs and other stuff required for FoIP support also have
>> > no interest in writing any further faxing support for Asterisk (RxFax,
>> > TxFax + the newest span_dsp wont even compile, much less work under
>> > Asterisk any more) probably because they know it will never be
>> > included into the Asterisk code.
>>
>> Someone please tell me this isn't truth.
>
> Afaik it is true that it will not be included in the Asterisk source
> because Steve will not disclaim the code to Digium (which he off course
> is entitled to). I compiled the latest spandsp (iirc 0.0.3pre27) on a
> FC6 box and it compiles fine.
>
> On Steve's website there are versions of app_rxfax and app_txfax for
> 1.4. Takes some messing around with the 1.4 build system to get them
> included but it worked for me last night. Those apps can be found here:
>
> http://www.soft-switch.org/downloads/snapshots/spandsp/test-apps-asterisk-1.4/
>
>>From reading this list it seems you are better off using iaxmodem and
> Hylafax (I guess that it assuming the fax comes in via TDM on the
> Asterisk box). Or check out OpenPBX.org as they have done much work on
> T.38 support (visit irc channel #openpbx on freenode.net to talk about
> the current status).
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Regards,
> Patrick
>
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