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

[David Boyd]

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

Dave
On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 10:43 -0600, Tilghman Lesher wrote:
> 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.
>