http://www.trixbox.org/devblog/trixbox-position-asterisk-1-6
A business selling a product based around Asterisk code not willing (or not able?) to fork out $5k for dev work to what would appear to be a valuable add-on to their product suite. An interesting conundrum, indeed. Craig -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Craig Lawrence Sent: Saturday, 1 November 2008 10:48 AM To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] General development funding: discussionand survey You've asked a reasonable question. I am assuming here that part of the assumption behind the Open Source model is that the maintainer of the code base can also maintain profitability and survive at the same time as providing a community with the source code. It's not just about getting the job done. Prior to JT's post I had spoken to several contributors to Asterisk who had informed me that the core components of the project and core future rewrites are normally completed by a dedicated team of developers (normally internal on payroll at Digium). In some instances the developer team is outsourced under contract from Digium. Under either method almost the entire price of the dev work hits Digium's books. A lot of the development is just too critical to leave to a 'best efforts' community. I believe that this is just reality. The community is useful in testing and bug reporting on the product, suggesting patches and work around on the periphery (not often in core architecture issues). Even where a significant component is contributed by an external consultant (eg fax) Digium have little choice but to bring one of their internal teams up to speed on the code so that it can be considered in future release versions. I therefore believe that the price of developing Asterisk to Digium is high. Therefore researching into funding options is a very logical outcome. Now, if you look at the type of contributor who is a) asking for fixes and/or features and b) willing to significant hard cash for the work, you start to see some common themes. These contributors have created a business of varying size that is using Asterisk, quite often as a core component of some commercial product (Fonality, Enswitch, Tesco/Freshtel, etc). These businesses have the cash and are willing to part with funds for desired features. The current implementation of Open Source provides little avenue for relieving these companies of their cash (I regard this as a system failure). Also, if we now turn our attention to the way Digium has managed its relationships with the likes of Fonality etc I believe you would see something of a cold shoulder approach to these businesses. In my opinion this is somewhat of a failure to make the best of a significant opportunity. And now, JT is suggesting that there could be a means of accessing funding from the likes of these businesses to improve the development process. Is it too late to reverse previous decisions and change a fundamental management approach towards those entities that are the prime candidates for contributing significant funding. I believe it is. But who knows, however what I know is that thus far Digium's implementation of its Open Source model has some significant shortcomings. That's just my 2c. Thanks Craig Lawrence -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of C. Savinovich Sent: Saturday, 1 November 2008 2:20 AM To: 'Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion' Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] General development funding: discussionand survey Craig, May I ask in what sense do you believe the open source project is not working for asterisk? My opinion is that it is, but I am open to hear yours, since it is the educated opinion of someone in the industry. And I gather, based on your response, that that's how you see it. Best regards CS -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Craig Lawrence Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 1:09 AM To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion; Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] General development funding: discussion and survey John You are inferring that in this instance (with respect to Asterisk) the Open Source Model isn't working. As a consequence, you are researching alternative means of funding the existing Digium Open Source model. I would respectfully suggest that you look further into the reasons for the failure of Digium's implementation of the Open Source Model before you canvas the community with requests for funding. Regards Craig Lawrence -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Todd Sent: Friday, 31 October 2008 6:12 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion; [email protected] Subject: [asterisk-biz] General development funding: discussion and survey [sending to -users and -biz in a slightly different format to broaden participation] Summary: Would you help fund different Open-Source Asterisk enhancements, bugfixes, or documentation if there was a way to collectively contribute money towards the effort without a profit margin incorporated into the price? If so, jump to the bottom of this message and fill out the form on the URL provided. There is no obligation to anything by filling out the form - think of this as a "market survey". The Long Version: Everyone on this list is presumably an Asterisk user, advocate, or is in some way benefitting from the project. Your ideas and survey participation would be welcome on the topic below. Many coders love coding for Asterisk but often can't find the time to do it for free when faced with things like buying food, paying mortgages, and keeping current with their insurance - this is totally understandable. Many coders have and continue to contribute things to Asterisk at no cost, but these patches are typically their own "itches", where they have solved a particular problem of their own. Rarely do people pick up problems that are not related to anything they're doing, or pick up unrelated problems that are so large that it would involve 100% of their time for any significant period. Some people ("Bless your heart!" as they say here in Huntsville) work on bugs and enhancements that don't directly benefit them at all - these are the most valuable contributors we have - you know who you are. Most of the time, though, there is a directly relevant reason why people work on code and often that means more obscure bugs or feature implementations languish, though still worthwhile if someone were to complete them. On the other side of the scale there are many people or companies who perhaps would like to contribute to paying for various features in Asterisk that would be described as "large enhancements" or even minor bugs and annoyances, but do not have sufficient funds to pay for an entire project themselves. There are perhaps also many people who would like to help out Asterisk in a way that allows them to contribute funding towards the project, but they're uncomfortable sending money to a corporation and hoping that it gets eventually applied to OSS Asterisk (and I'm not only talking about Digium in this case.) There are coders available for a fee (perhaps much less than market rate, perhaps not - we'll just say "non-zero cost") who could do this work and would love to do it if they could justify the time spent. Open-Source Software doesn't always imply that the code is "unpaid work", and Digium's contributions towards Asterisk are a case for the benefits of having an income stream and payment system (salaries) that supplements OSS development. So there is a disconnect between two groups of willing consumers and willing producers - how do we bridge it? The answer some have come up with is "Let's create an Asterisk fund and collect money and disperse money to pay for work by community members!" This is a great concept, but the devil is in the details, and I've found that when money is involved, the detail devil is much larger and angrier than usual. The problems with this idea have continually been: - Escrow of capital. It is not feasible to trust that donors will be good on their contribution post-release. This may be because it takes a while for the code and economic situations change, it may be that internal paperwork processes take forever to get done (Hi, Raj, sorry about that delay from Tello!), or it may just be that a large portion of funders are flaky. I'm willing to be convinced this isn't the case, but personally I certainly wouldn't code a large amount of hours based on the say-so of people I'd never worked with before. Perhaps some sort of metric could be created for more reliable payers, like a rating system of integrity? - Agreement of project goals. Who defines the project? Who gets what they want? Based on money? Based on some arbitration? What and who defines "success"? - Corporate structure for payments. If there is an agent in between the coders and the funders, then what kind of agent is that? For- profit? Not-for-profit? Who pays for the creation of this entity? It's possibly the case that Digium Inc. is not the best place for this funding repository, though possibly that would make life a lot easier from an organizational standpoint. (not sure about taxes, though.) - How to pay? Obviously, the more the merrier, but credit cards, bank accounts, PayPal, and other payment instruments are complex and expensive. Payment to consultants is another problem - taxation may be a problem again. - Serious interest. This has been a topic of conversation for the last 6 years that I'm aware of, and none of the concepts or problems I'm bringing up here are new. However, it is discussed but no action is taken. Perhaps now is the time to serious look at this concept since Asterisk is reaching such a large audience. Traditionally, the number of people or organizations that would provide "seed" funding for something like this is low; possibly only a single organization (Digium) would have the focused interest and capital to create such a financial/organizational entity as a non-profit or other unrelated instrument. But who would use it, really? At what level of actual contribution? To convince Digium (and/or hopefully other founding members of some as-yet undefined organization) to put their money and effort towards such a fund/foundation, there would have to be significant interest beyond idle discussion. The bounty concept on voip-info.org has been around for a while, but saw only marginal uptake. I've been a part of three or four (or more) paid projects, but only two (the sounds-extras recordings, and the SIP session timers) have actually seen multiple contributors, and the rest were straight-up consulting. What companies or individuals would actually put money into such a fund, and would it be enough to make it worthwhile or self-sustaining on an ongoing basis? Those of you who re-package Asterisk for commercial purposes but are not active contributors of patches or enhancements: I'm looking at you, specifically. Before these fairly large problems get discussed, I think the first goal in this investigation would really be to see if there is actually an interest in such an entity, so that last point is the problem I think we can try to solve here first. To try to get some metrics on this that are something other than "around-the-dinner-table" discussions, I've put together a form to collect some data. If you have an interest in putting money towards some general fund for Asterisk development, we're at a stage in the cycle where your input counts. Please take a moment to put your data in the form below. Note that all replies (except for email address) are public, given the spirit of this whole concept being a community effort. All of the points above are open for discussion. Your comments on this thread are welcome, since this is truly a "community" concept. Since this topic has come up on many occasions, but rarely in a wide forum, this perhaps is a good time to determine if there is truly interest or if the methods that we have currently are sufficient. If may be the case that there is no interest - that's OK. It may be the case that there is interest, but there is no viable way to create such an entity. (Digium, my employer, is not putting itself on the hook for anything in this message - I'm trying to gauge interest ONLY.) You're not obligating yourself to actually paying anyone by filling out these forms, as this is just a quick survey of how large the audience really is. PLEASE keep discussion of policy, structure, and technical details here on the list. Use the form below ONLY for cataloging your willingness to pay for Asterisk work via some idealized mechanism. If you're a coder, a survey about that may follow later which captures your willingness to work for money, but I suspect that's a pretty well- known truism that needs little confirmation. Feel free to forward this note to others (your boss, your co-workers, other less-involved Asterisk coders) who may have an interest in this type of funding approach. I figure a month would be a reasonable time for letting this form collect data, but that's open for discussion as well. Form for your input: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pmllU1ebPNlhUl_3QHUqvAg Results: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pmllU1ebPNlgCMhLQ2FaZRA JT --- John Todd [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1-256-428-6083 Asterisk Open Source Community Director _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
