[Asterisk-Users] Re: Asterisk forking, Was: Digium Website Update: Asterisk Business Edition

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

On Saturday 11 June 2005 19:51, Lee Howard wrote:
> I don't think that "lack of mindshare" completely defines the reasons
> behind Asterisk fork failures.  It places all of the blame on the
> forkers.  I think the truth, though, is that they not only fail due to
> "lack of mindshare" but also due to competition from Digium's own
> Asterisk community.  Forks are not succeeding, yes, but Digium has a
> hand in that... of course they do.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious: how does Digium have a hand in a 
fork failing?

> I've heard more talk about Asterisk forks than I've ever heard about
> forks of any other other open-source project.  I think that this says
> something about how difficult-to-swallow Digium's dual-license decree is
> for a lot of prospective contributors/developers.

I disagree; if it were that hard to swallow the project would either be 90% 
digium-written (it's not) or it would be a total flop (again it's not).  I 
think that, like any distribution of people, there are a very loud minority 
who disagree, while the majority of people say "meh" and don't worry about it 
for the largest part.

> We see this happen all of the time with the Linux kernel.  It happens
> with HylaFAX.  It happened with X.  I'm sure it happens a lot with many
> other open-source software projects.  It happens easily and usually is a
> "healthy" process because the playing field is even.

Agreed.   But where are the successful Asterisk forks?

> Of course, this "healthy" forking cannot be done with Asterisk because
> Digium will not accept any non-disclaimed code into their repository.

... What you'd described about distribution-maintained patches has nothing to 
do with this.  Digium could take a distribution-maintained patch and rewrite 
it into Asterisk proper under the dual license (as could any other 
contributor) and you'd still gain the benefit of the patch.  I'm not sure I 
see where you're going here.

> Thus any fork will, by decree, become a competitive fork.  It is not in
> Digium's best interests to see forking succeed... otherwise they should
> expect to lose market value in their investment - certainly they would
> lose market share.  And, for this reason, the playing field was set up
> unevenly.  It was Digium's code to contribute, and it was Digium's
> perogative to set things up the way they did.

I'm not quite sure I follow.  It's been a very long day in the sun though and 
I, for the first time in my life, have a belly sunburn.  Let me think about 
this a little.  :-)

> In this atmosphere of competition, then, a competing fork will never
> succeed unless the fork goes into a lot of work setting up mailing
> lists, setting up bug tracking, setting up web sites, download sites,
> etc.  Plus, the fork must continually monitor contributions to the
> competitors and port them to their fork.  And, then on top of all of
> that, the fork must undergo a continuous development push that is
> significant enough in comparison to the competition that gets it enough
> exposure and attention to attract a user community and a developer
> community in order to sustain the "arms race" until the purposes of the
> fork are acheived.  This is no easy task.

Take a look at the bugtracker; there are some disclaimed patches in there that 
have been maintained for almost a YEAR and kept in sync with HEAD... that's a 
LOT of work!  It will eventually succeed or it'll become some third-party 
closed up lib.  I have to admit that I know quite a few people with their own 
modules and such to replace what they feel is bad code and just won't 
contribute it back to Asterisk due to the friction they've received about the 
patch.  I, on the other hand, tend to bitch loud and continuously enough and 
wear them down to the point of accepting it.  :-)

> I think if all of those who have been discouraged to contribute to
> Asterisk because of Digium's dual-license policy (and this is no small
> number, mind you) were to unite and continue the fork with the same zeal
> that they had in ranting and complaining about Digium, then I think a
> fork could potentially succeed.  But, unless someone can point me to
> someone or some company that is going to make that happen, I don't think
> that it will.  I think that, for the most part, there's not enough
> motivation behind the rants to make a successful fork happen in the face
> of the competition.

I don't know about the numbers but yes, it is an enormous amount of energy to 
expend and I'm sure that those who are so vocal about the dual-license would 
have their own particular sets of infighting and competition to deal with 
which would kill off a successful fork.

-A.