[asterisk-users] Mixing commercial/SVN Asterisk

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Scott L. Lykens wrote:

> I don't mean to be rude in calling you out about it, however, I've been
> waiting for three months for an appearance of Fax for Asterisk that is
> compatible with 1.6.1.5+. Several previous requests for timelines to
> this list have resulted in responses indicating it was being worked on
> that week each time with no further information or public release made.

Believe me, I'm as frustrated by how long it took get the modules ready
as you are, and in hindsight we might have decided things differently.
In this case, the incompatibility was caused by a major change to the
T.38 negotiation API in Asterisk itself, which broke all existing T.38
applications for Asterisk. We updated app_fax along with the API change,
so that open source users could take advantage of the improvements
immediately... but the Fax For Asterisk changes took longer, because
they were made as part of a much larger set of bug fixes and performance
improvements, not independently (which they couldn't be, unfortunately).
We either had to choose this path, or delay the API changes until the
Fax For Asterisk modules were ready... but that would have negatively
impacted a much larger segment of the community who use app_fax only, or
do T.38 passthrough only, or both.

> It is frustrating to me as we are encouraged to upgrade due to security
> issues but if we want to use this particular Digium product we cannot. I
> have chosen to upgrade as we have not purchased Fax for Asterisk and as
> we are unable to evaluate it I doubt we will. (Not to be snarky but I
> don't think I'm interested in buying a product that has been
> incompatible with its intended companion's official release for nearly
> four months now with no public progress on making it compatible,
> especially when those releases are suggested to resolve security
> issues.)

I can understand your frustration, but since Asterisk is open source and
delivered as source code, you are free to use any combination of
releases + patches that you like. In the case of the last few security
releases (AST-2009-006, 007, 008 and 010), only -006 had a patch that
was extensive enough to not be able to applied to 1.6.1.4, and even that
one might have applied without too much effort. It is certainly possible
to run 1.6.1.4 plus security patches released later, and in fact many
users do this sort of thing on a regular basis because they don't want
to include *any* other changes in their upgrades. Not everyone is
comfortable with doing that, though.

The good news is that the Fax For Asterisk modules have passed our PQ
department's testing process and are ready to be released; I believe
they will all be released in the next couple of days, along with the
release of Asterisk 1.6.2.0, although if it gets delayed any longer the
1.6.0.x and 1.6.1.x FFA modules should be released separately.

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
skype: kpfleming | jabber: kpfleming at digium.com
Check us out at www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org