[asterisk-users] Digium Fax Driver

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Sunday 07 June 2009 23:29:30 Lee Howard wrote:
>  I
> only want to clear up any misrepresentations about possible patent
> infringements by spandsp to which you alluded.

My understanding wasn't that Steve violated any patents, but that he actively
avoided certain techniques to avoid conflicting with various patents.

> > That said, hours of use in production do not speak to the amount of
> > testing done.
>
> Scrutiny of production use exposure does not constitute testing?  Well,
> I would argue that you cannot possibly test real-world conditions
> without actually placing the test system into the real-world with
> real-world use (thus, production).  I cannot think of a better way to
> test software than to eventually put it into real-world production use
> and then have the developers monitor those systems closely.

There's more than a few security holes in the world today because developers
(falsely) believed that real-world use constituted testing.  No, I'm not
saying spandsp has security holes, but I am actively challenging your
assertion that real-world use constitutes testing.

> > IAXmodem is a completely different ball of wax, and I think you would
> > agree that if the builtin FAX support in spandsp provided excellent
> > support, there never would have been a reason for IAXmodem to be
> > developed.
>
> I'm interested to know how you understand my intent in developing
> IAXmodem differs from what I recall.  I developed IAXmodem because I
> needed to interface HylaFAX through an Asterisk PBX without purchasing
> additional hardware (other than the T1 cards that were already involved).

At the time I worked for a reseller, the native apps (RxFax and TxFax) failed
about 5% of the time, a problem which using IAXmodem and hylafax cleared
up to less than 1% problems.  We thus deployed IAXmodem to customers who
needed incoming fax support, because it simply performed better.

-- 
Tilghman