[asterisk-users] Discussion: Are we ready to leave 1.4 behind?

[Bryant Zimmerman]

----------------------------------------
 From: "Ira" <ira at extrasensory.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 12:38 PM
To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" 
<asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Discussion: Are we ready to leave 1.4 
behind?

At 07:56 AM 5/5/2011, you wrote:
>So how can we fix this? How can we get more people involded? What 
>makes projects like FedoraTesting[3] and DebianTesting[4] 
>popular? How can the Asterisk project reproduce their success?

Well, it's not a lot of people willing to run beta software on their 
phone system. Phones need to work and for most people they need to 
work perfectly all the time. I'm one of those oddities that will 
always run beta software if given the chance but my experience is 
that quite rare.

>As I've said before, I'm more then willing to help with answering 
>questions about the testsuite or reviewing code that people want to 
>get merged in. We also have an IRC channel, #asterisk-testing 
>available for people to join, ask question, idle, lurk, etc, or if 
>you want to reply to this thread, feel free. But get involved! :)

So I'm the person who has never been able to keep 1.8 alive on my 
system for more than a minute or two and I've probably tried more 
than 10 different betas and release versions. I posted a bug report 
which was closed in minutes, I posted the problem on this list every 
few tries and zero response. I tried to figure out mIRC. It's 
installed on my machine but I've never got past that. I just don't 
get the instructions.

I know that all the people involved in the project are Linux heads, 
but some of us, like me, have a Linux box only because of Asterisk 
and if you want my help, you need to make being involved accessible 
and stop assuming we all know what you know. I see the words, "jut 
post a bug report on Mantis" posted all the time and I'm sure it 
means as little to others as it means to me. Maybe there needs to be 
a web page somewhere, "Asterisk beta testing for dummies" so that you 
can point us to so you don't have to answer the stupid questions over and 
over.

I've beta tested enough and had enough beta testers to understand the 
kinds of things that make it possible to get bugs fixed, but it's 
usually a very small percentage of users that understand that.

Ira 
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Ira

Contact me off list and we can have a conversation. We are running 1.6.2.x 
boxes and 1.8.x boxes very successfully. We have had issues with 1.8.x but 
that is to be expected as it has been bleeding edge at times.  I am not a 
linux expert either but if I may be ableo to point you in the right 
direction. Your determination to support Asterisk is what the community 
needs if I can help foster that I would be happy to do so.  I am only where 
I am at because others invested some time in me.  

examples: The power of IRC chats. I spend three days on the freenas forums 
and could not solve a problem I was just pulling my hair out. I took 20 min 
to get up to speed with irc using IceChat and after 1.5 hours on the 
freenas board the problem was solved and I was diving deep into the guts of 
the freenas 8 system. it was a game changer for me.

Bryant
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