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

[Maron Kristófersson]

Hi List.

I think we as users have a choice to look at this a bit differently.
You as a user, consultant or reseller of asterisk services, simply have
more options here.  It also makes it much easier to implement asterisk
in the enterprise to be able to provide it with guaranteed support.

I for my part, now can choose to install Asterisk and support it myself,
with access to the community, or I can install Asterisk and buy support
directly from Digium. Guaranteeing quality and support is quite hard
while providing source code, Digium could easily spend countless hours
on a bug implemented by their customer (and the customer would furiously
deny that he had made any changes).

It wouldn't make any sense for digium to implement features only in the
proprietary license spectrum, when they can do it and get it tested
opensource for free, unless there is a really big enterprise ready to
pay to iron out the bugs and test it.

No complaints from me here as long as their sticking to the same source
(as Kevin says clearly below).  Just as well I think there are
mailing-lists available on the internet to discuss various licensing
options.

Maron Kristofersson

Kevin P. Fleming wrote:
> Aidan Van Dyk wrote:
> 
>> In either case, since they are committed to the open source model, are
>> they willing to tell us what features/bug fixes in CVS are considered an
>> increased liability and risk, or what important features and bug fixes
>> they've applied on top of CVS?  This could help those of us trying to
>> build stable, robust, asterisk-based solutions promote asterisk as a
>> stable, robust, low-risk platform.
> 
> 
> There is absolutely _no_ code in ABE that is not in CVS HEAD, except for
> the code related to license control required for the commercial product
> and an installer (since it's a binary distribution). We have not, and
> will not, put any bug fixes or new features into ABE that do not go into
> CVS HEAD as well (and in fact I don't think there's any situation where
> a feature would go into ABE first).
> 
> Simply stated, ABE is a supported, documented, tested and commercially
> packaged/licensed version of Asterisk, designed for companies who want
> such a package. It is missing quite a number of features from CVS HEAD
> that were deemed unnecessary and/or difficult to support, and it will
> not be updated as often as CVS HEAD itself is (or even as often as the
> stable releases are made), from what I understand. It does not come with
> source code, nor is the exact source code available to anyone outside of
> Digium, which is done purely for support reasons. ABE users can call
> Digium support and the support staff will know _exactly_ what they are
> running, since it is a packaged release.
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