[asterisk-users] Upgrade to Asterisk 1.4 - it's one year's old!

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Saturday 15 December 2007 12:14:29 David Boyd wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-12-15 at 10:51 -0600, Tilghman Lesher wrote:
> > Of course, all of these deprecations should be covered in UPGRADE.txt, so
> > please read that file every time you upgrade to a new version.  It will
> > contain everything that has changed in a possibly incompatible way.  And
> > if you find something that broke that wasn't in this file, please let us
> > know, so we can revise that file.  We may not have gotten everything, but
> > we do try.
>
> So if I read you correctly, all of the pain of the upgrade is due to
> lack of effort on the participants part!

I wouldn't say all of it, but it would be a lot easier if people paid
attention to the deprecation notices and resolved them.  The whole
point of deprecating methods is to allow people a transitional period
in which they stop using said method and move to its replacement.

> This seems a whole lot like the attitude of proprietary vendors when
> they don't want to support a feature that is outside the scope of what
> they want  to maintain. I thought this was an open source project that
> would allow participants to have a voice in what is or isn't included in
> a new release. Even an non developing end user provides valuable benefit
> to the project in QA and bug information to improve the project as a
> whole. Most  (With exceptions) projects have a bit more interest in what
> the user community wants or needs  in a  package. The attitude of this
> project seems to be " If you want it code it yourself, however if it
> something that doesn't map to the ideas of what Digium wants then it
> will never make it into the official release.

Digium is a company; it does not "want" anything.  The developers of
the project, of which Digium has sponsored a great many, most of whom
were developers prior to being employed by Digium, get to make those
types of calls.  Do you see the distinction?  One of the nice things about
working for Digium is that I maintain my individual perspective as a
developer; we do not engage in groupthink.

> I don't understand why so much community support is placed into the
> project considering that the typical end user is treated like a second
> class citizen.

I can't think of a single software project where the typical end user is
anything but.  Every open source project is not a democracy; they are
meritocracies.  That is, the degree to which your opinion matters is the
degree to which you are able to contribute.  And this isn't just code writers,
either.  People who put forth the effort to document the code also get a
kudos and karma, as do people who report bugs, suggest fixes, and give
feedback on candidate patches.  To a lesser extent, knowledgable users
who help on the various forums and business leaders who sponsor
developers to work on Asterisk also have a greater voice than the typical
end user.

And that's true for closed source, as well.  When was the last time that an
end user asked for and received a new feature from Microsoft?

> So Digium, (I address the company since Tilghman now works for you) do
> you have any plans to query the user community and determine what a
> typical end user of the product needs? With the knowledge and skill that
> exists in  your organization it would seem trivial to put something in
> place to allow user feedback not only developer feedback for release
> direction.

It is extremely insulting for you to try to address my employer, when we're
discussing code practice.  For one thing, the company (though legally a
person) does not generally respond on these lists.  And secondly, as I
mentioned before, all developers maintain their individual perspective, so
when I make points on here, I do so as an individual contributor.  If you have
an issue with the way that I have approached something, then please talk to
me.  Trying to go over my head is rude and unlikely to produce better results.

As far as user feedback, there are multiple forums that exist that will
influence individual developers, to a certain extent, which are the -dev
list (please discuss code or policy, NOT user-level assistance; that's what
this list is for), the #asterisk-dev channel on Freenode (same condition
applies; use #asterisk for user-level questions), and the bugtracker (which
is for reporting bugs, inconsistencies, and other things that relate to
execution, not policy, which should be discussed on the mailing lists).

Of course, if you want your voice heard more loudly, then contribute some
of your efforts towards furthering the project.  Complaints are always heard
more critically when they come from somebody who has made the effort to
give back in some way.

-- 
Tilghman