[asterisk-users] no unicall on 1.4

[Anton Krall]

Couldn’t agree with you more Lee.

I think its very difficult for a software company to be able to stay focused
on developing the software while been profitable, that’s why many companies
turn to consulting services (Sun), other develop hardware (IBM and OS/2 :))

Digium has been doing a great job with asterisk but like you said, access to
the code without hassle was a plus for developers, now, well, they are
probably going to turn to some other open source project like openpbx and
probably Digium will end up hiring their own programmers and in time,
asterisk could stop been an open source project and become a commercial only
software.

One thing that’s interesting is how Digium turned to hardware like the TDM
cards for getting money but as of now, Sangoma for example offers a better
product (to me at least due to my experience with Digium hardware, timing
sources, HW compatibility, etc.) so let me ask the awkward question: what is
Digium doing 100% right? HW? No, software, used to, but maybe not now, so?

Don’t get me wrong, I love asterisk and will stick with 1.2 until something
comes along (openpbx goes stable, etc.) but come on guys at Digium, focus...
open source software was about making something by the community for the
community, not getting XXX million USD in VC while losing your best
programmers, the community and the R2MFC market :)
 



|-----Original Message-----
|From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
|bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Lee Howard
|Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 10:14 PM
|To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
|Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] no unicall on 1.4
|
|Anton Krall wrote:
|
|>This is exactly one of the things that Steve and I discussed a bit ago...
|>when did asterisk turn from an open source project with very good
developers
|>into a business that only focuses in $$$?
|>
|>
|
|Well, I think that there can be no doubt that there still are some very
|good developers working on Asterisk, but yes, I do understand what
|you're saying, and I think that we're not the only ones that have
|noticed it. In particular I've noticed how the disclaimer requirement is
|a sore spot, and as well how impossibly difficult it is for Digium
|competitors to get their patches applied to the code base:
|
|http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=7742
|
|>That’s why openpbx was born I guess....
|>
|>
|
|In part, yes. I think that some of these things are like lead weights to
|the Asterisk development process - I think that Steve Underwood
|appreciated the unfettered CVS commit access to the OpenPBX repository.
|That's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that Asterisk may have been able
|to have, itself, possibly. I see Steve's participation in OpenPBX as a
|big selling point (i.e. real T.38 gatewaying and actual spandsp
|integration). However, there's a lot of momentum behind Asterisk, and
|that's compensated somewhat for its lead weights up until now, and
|OpenPBX can't seem to get a public release out.
|
|At Cluecon last year in Chicago anthm told the conference how it was his
|belief that it would be better to start from scratch than to fix up all
|of the problems with Asterisk like OpenPBX is attempting - and thus we
|have FreeSWITCH.
|
|So there are lots of possibilities out there, and I can only think that
|the lead weights in the Asterisk development process will eventually
|lead to more issues than with chan_unicall.
|
|>For example, samba is still free, and people are making a profit from it
by
|>giving out consulting services for deploying samba.. that is a good
working
|>scenario.... asterisk used to be the same.... can you spell greedy :)?
|>
|>
|
|Well, when you sell consulting services for deploying Samba your
|business focus is still on the software. If they were selling
|Samba-related hardware or were heavily involved in selling Samba-related
|things like books and tee-shirts, etc., instead of actually working the
|software itself... well, then I think you'd see the same kinds of
|problems that you're frustrated with now. It's all too easy for that
|business activity to become a conflict of interest when it's not
|directly related to the user-experienced software itself.
|
|Lee.
|
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