Nicholas Leippe wrote: > On Tuesday 04 November 2008 10:42:56 am Hans Fugal wrote: >> I want a better asterisk or asterisk alternative as much as anyone, but >> what level of maturity have these projects reached? For all its foibles >> asterisk has been the best all-around VOIP solution in my experience, so >> far. Have these other projects caught up with asterisk, maintained their >> purity, gathered an enthusiastic and helpful user base, and gone through >> the paces to work out the bugs and security issues? > > I would have to say, yes. But just like asterisk, they are on-going projects. > >> I'm not saying >> asterisk is perfect, but as it had a considerable head start, in my mind >> the burden of proof that any of these others are actually better is on >> you/them. But I'm willing to be educated... > > At this point, I liken asterisk to microsoft. Just because it's ubiquitous, > doesn't mean it is great. While asterisk remains tremendously useful, it has > some serious fundamental problems, as anyone that has had to admin asterisk > in > an HA environment can attest. Furthermore, the devs consistently break > compatibility, despite community outrage... starting to sound like devs from > some other projects...?
I'm the first to criticize asterisk, it often frustrates me and astounds me (in bad ways). But things seem to have settled down quite a bit and improved across the board. Take that last point for example. While undoubtedly true in the past I believe I heard a recent announcement that compatibility is now frozen and will be held sacred from this point forward, even across major releases, for the forseeable future (I'm going from memory here, but I distinctly remember something to that effect). I contend that asterisk is an active, open, evolving project. One with a questionable original code base and wacky design decisions (sound like any other Mark Spencer-started projects?), but one with substantial energy, support, and active evolution. If anything defines a successful open source project it's that. Asterisk's own success up to now is a manifestation of that. Of course that doesn't mean alternatives can't or won't catch up or be worth a look. I myself often find OpenSER (or whatever they call it now) to be a better fit in some cases (though it has its own problems and quirks, and disappointed me by failing to be better than asterisk at a task it *should* have been clearly superior at - but that's another post). Those alternatives probably are worth a look, and I hope I get a chance to look at them. -- Hans Fugal ; http://hans.fugal.net There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. -- Johann Sebastian Bach /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
