[Asterisk-Dev] Asterisk Maintenance and Development

[Jeffrey C. Ollie]

On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 14:41 -0500, Mike M wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 03, 2005 at 10:57:58AM -0600, Howard White wrote:
> > 
> > The growth of Asterisk (the program) and Asterisk (the community)
> > demands that the keepers of the keys (Mark; Digium) institute proper,
> > formal and documented Product (Program) Life Cycle techniques.  We all
> > wish for Asterisk (the program) to be accepted by a wider audience which
> > may only be accomplished by having a clear path of where Asterisk is
> > going (and by when).
> 
> I must have missed something about open source.

Just because it's open source does not mean that development has to be
chaotic.  However, I don't think that we need super-formal "Product Life
Cycle" management.

> Since when did open source projects run according project schedules?

Hmm... Let me think of a few examples... Mozilla, Gnome, Redhat/Fedora,
GIMP.

> Open source is a gift.  How can one ask for a gift on a schedule?

That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that
open source developers are compensated in non-monetary ways.  For a much
better discussion of that see "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and related
papers by Eric S. Raymond:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/

Note that Digium and many others (myself included) receive monetary
compensation because of Asterisk, either by selling compatible hardware,
consulting services, development services, ITSP services, etc.

Also, take a look at this interview with Bryce Harrington, one of the
major developers of Inkscape <www.inkscape.org>:

http://dot.kde.org/1099664490/

Jeff