Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
On Oct 29, 2014, at 2:45 PM, Ben Klang bkl...@mojolingo.com wrote: On 10/28/2014 06:03 PM, Ben Langfeld wrote: On 28 October 2014 19:47, Derek Andrew derek.and...@usask.ca wrote: What is the alternative to the dial plan? Is everyone talking about getting rid of the statements like: exten = s,1, what is the alternative? Remote applications based on APIs like ARI. This is the start of the discussion, and please remember that nothing has been decided or even presented as a robust plan yet. This is brain-storming. Additionally, note that the original proposal was to deprecate AMI/AGI in favour of ARI once it is feature complete with those protocols; an entirely lesser change than the removal of the dialplan in its entirety. Since this thread has my name on it, I guess it’s past time that I explain my motivation for making the suggestion, and try to restore some of the context that was present in the discussion at AstriDevCon. Before I jump into the details of my proposal, I’d like to clarify terms... It’s intellectually dishonest to redefine the terms of an argument to presuppose your own conclusion. If you don’t intend to use the term “deprecate” as it is commonly understood by software developers and users than you should avoid the use of the term “deprecate” so that others clearly understand your argument. If you really mean “deprecate” as commonly understood by software developers and users then you should be prepared to defend that proposition. Now, on to what I originally proposed... It’s clear from the title of the agenda item what was proposed. You proposed deprecating AMI/AGI and that entails deprecating the dial plan. The fact that deprecating the dial plan is now on the table is a direct consequence of your proposal. This is reflected in both comments made at AstiCon and Matt’s summary of Astricon on the development list. You can’t have it both ways. You want to deprecate dial plan or not. Which is it? It is my opinion that while AGI and AMI are probably individually fixable, doing so would cause backward-incompatible changes… Deprecating the dial plan and AGI/AMI is incompatible going forward. What is supposed to happen? Are users supposed to throw away there applications whenever ARI/Stasis is feature complete? Is ARI/Stasis really any easier to use than the dial plan? Are we all supposed to use Adhearsion? -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
Il giorno Oct 30, 2014, alle ore 4:57 PM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com ha scritto: On Oct 29, 2014, at 2:45 PM, Ben Klang bkl...@mojolingo.com mailto:bkl...@mojolingo.com wrote: On 10/28/2014 06:03 PM, Ben Langfeld wrote: On 28 October 2014 19:47, Derek Andrew derek.and...@usask.ca mailto:derek.and...@usask.ca wrote: What is the alternative to the dial plan? Is everyone talking about getting rid of the statements like: exten = s,1, what is the alternative? Remote applications based on APIs like ARI. This is the start of the discussion, and please remember that nothing has been decided or even presented as a robust plan yet. This is brain-storming. Additionally, note that the original proposal was to deprecate AMI/AGI in favour of ARI once it is feature complete with those protocols; an entirely lesser change than the removal of the dialplan in its entirety. Since this thread has my name on it, I guess it’s past time that I explain my motivation for making the suggestion, and try to restore some of the context that was present in the discussion at AstriDevCon. Before I jump into the details of my proposal, I’d like to clarify terms... It’s intellectually dishonest to redefine the terms of an argument to presuppose your own conclusion. If you don’t intend to use the term “deprecate” as it is commonly understood by software developers and users than you should avoid the use of the term “deprecate” so that others clearly understand your argument. If you really mean “deprecate” as commonly understood by software developers and users then you should be prepared to defend that proposition. I had thought that the term “deprecate” was already understood to be the definition I gave, but earlier posts on the mailing list seemed to indicate confusion. My definition mirrors the Wikipedia definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deprecation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deprecation. Perhaps I just should have linked to that originally, as their explanation is even better than my own. In any event, what we are talking about is the deprecation as I defined it. If you prefer another word for it, I’m fine with that too. I just want to be clear that my proposal is to discourage use of AMI/AGI in new projects, but not to immediately remove it. Now, on to what I originally proposed... It’s clear from the title of the agenda item what was proposed. You proposed deprecating AMI/AGI and that entails deprecating the dial plan. The fact that deprecating the dial plan is now on the table is a direct consequence of your proposal. This is reflected in both comments made at AstiCon and Matt’s summary of Astricon on the development list. You can’t have it both ways. You want to deprecate dial plan or not. Which is it? Actually, AMI/AGI and Dialplan are separate. You can disable AMI and you can unload res_agi.so. Dialplan/extensions.conf continue to work just fine. Certainly AMI/AGI make use of Dialplan, but deprecating AMI/AGI doesn’t mean you have to deprecate Dialplan. It is my opinion that while AGI and AMI are probably individually fixable, doing so would cause backward-incompatible changes… Deprecating the dial plan and AGI/AMI is incompatible going forward. What is supposed to happen? Are users supposed to throw away there applications whenever ARI/Stasis is feature complete? Is ARI/Stasis really any easier to use than the dial plan? Are we all supposed to use Adhearsion? You’re certainly welcome to use Adhearsion :) For what it’s worth, Adhearsion will continue to support AMI/AGI because we have to until ARI is feature-complete. For Adhearsion users, the transition to ARI should be seamless because that’s one of the things that the framework promises: to paper over the idiosyncrasies of the underlying protocols. If you don’t want to use Adhearsion, I’d recommend you look at ARI for developing new projects. There are libraries in many languages that make it easy to use. It’s got a great start and will only improve as people continue to use it and develop additional features. Today, it is not yet a replacement for AMI/AGI, but I’m very optimistic that it will be in the near future. I suspect that I’m not convincing to you, and that you want to continue using AMI/AGI. That’s fine, I’m not telling you to throw out any code. I think Asterisk’s historical policy toward backward compatibility and removing features speaks for itself. Rather than continue to debate the semantics of my proposal, I’d like to continue the discussion on how we can improve ARI and improve the state of the world for all Asterisk developers in the years to come. /BAK/ -- Ben Klang Principal/Technology Strategist, Mojo Lingo bkl...@mojolingo.com mailto:bkl...@mojolingo.com +1.404.475.4841 Mojo Lingo -- Voice applications that work like magic http://mojolingo.com http://mojolingo.com/ Twitter: @MojoLingo
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 4:57 PM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: On Oct 29, 2014, at 2:45 PM, Ben Klang bkl...@mojolingo.com wrote: On 10/28/2014 06:03 PM, Ben Langfeld wrote: On 28 October 2014 19:47, Derek Andrew derek.and...@usask.ca wrote: What is the alternative to the dial plan? Is everyone talking about getting rid of the statements like: exten = s,1, what is the alternative? Remote applications based on APIs like ARI. This is the start of the discussion, and please remember that nothing has been decided or even presented as a robust plan yet. This is brain-storming. Additionally, note that the original proposal was to deprecate AMI/AGI in favour of ARI once it is feature complete with those protocols; an entirely lesser change than the removal of the dialplan in its entirety. Since this thread has my name on it, I guess it’s past time that I explain my motivation for making the suggestion, and try to restore some of the context that was present in the discussion at AstriDevCon. Before I jump into the details of my proposal, I’d like to clarify terms... It’s intellectually dishonest to redefine the terms of an argument to presuppose your own conclusion. If you don’t intend to use the term “deprecate” as it is commonly understood by software developers and users than you should avoid the use of the term “deprecate” so that others clearly understand your argument. If you really mean “deprecate” as commonly understood by software developers and users then you should be prepared to defend that proposition. Ben's use of the term 'deprecate' aligns completely with my understanding in addition to the definition provided on Wikipedia. To quote: While a deprecated software feature remains in the software, its use may raise warning messages recommending alternative practices; deprecated status may also indicate the feature will be removed in the future. Features are deprecated rather than immediately removed, to provide backward compatibility and give programmers time to bring affected code into compliance with the new standard. Now, on to what I originally proposed... It’s clear from the title of the agenda item what was proposed. You proposed deprecating AMI/AGI and that entails deprecating the dial plan. The fact that deprecating the dial plan is now on the table is a direct consequence of your proposal. This is reflected in both comments made at AstiCon and Matt’s summary of Astricon on the development list. You can’t have it both ways. You want to deprecate dial plan or not. Which is it? It stretches credulity that you assert you can divine the intentions of Ben or any of the others at AstriDevCon based solely on a hastily-jotted note while we were brainstorming. You cannot, and Ben has chimed in with a very well-reasoned description of what he meant. Additionally, there is absolutely NOTHING about the deprecation (or, possibly, the eventual removal) of AMI/AGI that by its nature means the dialplan is/will be/should be deprecated as well. While there are possible interactions amongst these three things, they are in large part orthogonal. As someone who was *actually there*, I can also state that Leif's mention of 'moving away from dialplan' is merely a statement of where he sees his development of Asterisk-based applications going. Tying these things together inextricably as you have is a factually-unsupportable position. It is my opinion that while AGI and AMI are probably individually fixable, doing so would cause backward-incompatible changes… Deprecating the dial plan and AGI/AMI is incompatible going forward. What is supposed to happen? Are users supposed to throw away there applications whenever ARI/Stasis is feature complete? Is ARI/Stasis really any easier to use than the dial plan? Are we all supposed to use Adhearsion? I don't recall Ben ever claiming (in the context of this discussion at least) that anyone, much less everyone, should use Adhearsion. I also don't know that I've heard anybody claim ARI is easier (or harder!) to use than dialplan. What it does offer is a way of controlling Asterisk that is different and in many ways more powerful than what's possible today using any or all of dialplan/AGI/ARI. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
Hi, I've been reading recent emails on the developers list and just wanted to add my 2 cents: While the AGI approach was never useful for my needs, I recently finished 2 years of almost straight development time to develop a full-fledged call answering solution and I would be VERY annoyed (to say the least) if AMI was deprecated! While many people do web programming due to it's simplicity, I find a C-based program is ALWAYS more elegant. As such, AMI was the ONLY interface to Asterisk that was useful to building the interface we needed (keep in mind that web socket support for C-based applications is VERY poor! We've researched it for another application found that we were not able to do what we needed it for!) we are just starting to enjoy the benefits of the work. I'm not saying web development doesn't have it's merits, as some applications demand it, but in my opinion a C-based program is better catered for someone using it 24-7. So please, if you want to deprecate something, don't do so to AMI! Note: While I'd have no problem myself with deprecating the dial-plan (actually, if I didn't have to deal with it at all the complexities of requiring a channel to be in async AGI mode before issuing an AMI command to it, then that would have very much simplified my development!), I can understand why a lot of people would be adverse to such a change. In summary, I think having different ways of controlling Asterisk are required, depending on the application: - AMI for those wishing to interface with a more elegant C-based application. - Something like the dial plan for those wishing to use Asterisk as is, without developing an external interface. - ARI or AGI for web-based solutions (hence why deprecating AGI probably wouldn't be negative, being that they are 2 solutions to the same ends..but DEFINITELY keep the AMI as it's purpose/use is different). Whatever you do, please keep the AMI interface! Thank You! On 10/28/2014 06:03 PM, Ben Langfeld wrote: On 28 October 2014 19:47, Derek Andrew derek.and...@usask.ca mailto:derek.and...@usask.ca wrote: What is the alternative to the dial plan? Is everyone talking about getting rid of the statements like: exten = s,1, what is the alternative? Remote applications based on APIs like ARI. This is the start of the discussion, and please remember that nothing has been decided or even presented as a robust plan yet. This is brain-storming. Additionally, note that the original proposal was to deprecate AMI/AGI in favour of ARI once it is feature complete with those protocols; an entirely lesser change than the removal of the dialplan in its entirety. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
On Oct 28, 2014, at 5:03 PM, Ben Langfeld b...@langfeld.me wrote: On 28 October 2014 19:47, Derek Andrew derek.and...@usask.ca wrote: What is the alternative to the dial plan? Is everyone talking about getting rid of the statements like: exten = s,1, what is the alternative? Remote applications based on APIs like ARI. This is the start of the discussion, and please remember that nothing has been decided or even presented as a robust plan yet. This is brain-storming. We’re not at the start of the “discussion” to deprecate the dial plan. The start of the “discussion” began when some developers decided to try standing Asterisk on its head by adding “asynchronous AGI.” Evidently, that was good so then they continued the “discussion” by adding ARI/Stasis. Now the “discussion” is in full career as ARI/Stasis has metastasized beyond its original scope to encompass all of Asterisk. None of said “discussion” ever happened on the lists nor was the broader Asterisk community involved as far as I can determine. A parallel “discussion” was started by a shill at AstiCon this year to begin to get the “vast unwashed” onboard with ARI/Stasis, that is, so that Matt could come back from AstiCon claiming that the broader Asterisk community is in agreement that ARI/Stasis is the future of Asterisk and that the dial plan can be deprecated. The inevitable result of these parallel paths is a completely predictable train wreck when the developers designing features that users don’t want crash into users who have been using Asterisk as originally designed. Additionally, note that the original proposal was to deprecate AMI/AGI in favour of ARI once it is feature complete with those protocols; an entirely lesser change than the removal of the dialplan in its entirety. So you're saying that deprecating the dial plan is not on the table? How then do you explain statements like this: Leif: we're in a transition, moving from dialplan model to external control model. Probably need external application to be built for us to move completely away from AMI/AGI.” or this Paul: take away apps, and whatever is in the core is what we should care about.” -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
On 10/28/2014 06:03 PM, Ben Langfeld wrote: On 28 October 2014 19:47, Derek Andrew derek.and...@usask.ca mailto:derek.and...@usask.ca wrote: What is the alternative to the dial plan? Is everyone talking about getting rid of the statements like: exten = s,1, what is the alternative? Remote applications based on APIs like ARI. This is the start of the discussion, and please remember that nothing has been decided or even presented as a robust plan yet. This is brain-storming. Additionally, note that the original proposal was to deprecate AMI/AGI in favour of ARI once it is feature complete with those protocols; an entirely lesser change than the removal of the dialplan in its entirety. Since this thread has my name on it, I guess it’s past time that I explain my motivation for making the suggestion, and try to restore some of the context that was present in the discussion at AstriDevCon. Before I jump into the details of my proposal, I’d like to clarify terms: * Deprecating something means that the project decides to no longer recommend its use. It does NOT mean immediate removal. As others on the list have pointed out, Asterisk 13 is out and will be supported for 5 years. Anything that is *deprecated* in Asterisk 14 or even 15 is likely to still be *supported*, just *not recommended*. That means that anything we decide to deprecate today is likely to be available for at least 7 years (2 years to next LTS release + 5 years of support). Given the excellent history of the Asterisk project at being backward compatible, it may even be longer than that. I’d say exactly how long depends on the community and the interest in maintaining it. * Removing something means it is gone from Asterisk. I made no proposals to remove anything, only to deprecate. Deprecating things is an important function of software projects. It allows us to gradually cut ties on old functionality that has been superseded and to focus development efforts and available resources on the replacement features. Deprecating gives the community a chance to communicate that at some point in the future, a feature will stop working. Until that time, when the deprecation graduates to removal, the feature is still supported. If we never deprecated anything, the project would eventually grind to a halt because we would spend all our time making sure that each new feature was compatible all the way back to Asterisk 1.0. Clearly there’s a middle ground. I’d like to consider deprecating features that can have viable replacements so we can appropriately focus our limited community resources. Now, on to what I originally proposed. I don’t *think* anyone actually recommended deprecating extensions.conf. There was a suggestion (by Leif I think, and in any event, I agree with it) that it might be nice to have the ability to control calls in Asterisk that never touch the extensions.conf. Control would come via ARI from external applications. Not having to configure the dialplan basically saves a step and makes it ever so slightly easier for application developers who don’t care about extensions.conf. From my perspective, and that of many Adhearsion applications, our extensions.conf is essentially empty except for the line that routes the call to AGI. For anyone who doesn’t want to use ARI, extensions.conf would continue to be available. I also agree with other posters to this thread who argue that not everything needs to be handled by an external application. For those cases, extensions.conf is sufficient. I am not in favor of deprecating or removing extensions.conf at this time. However, I most certainly did propose to deprecate AMI and AGI. As protocols they have several significant drawbacks: * AMI has historically had many problems with internal consistency. While that has improved dramatically, it’s still a difficult protocol to write generic parsers for due to the amount of state you have to track and the edge cases you have to consider. * AGI’s has two fatal flaws: 1) it is blocking. Once you start a Dial or Playback, you can’t do anything else until it completes. 2) It depends on Dialplan applications - if there isn’t a dialplan application, you can’t do it. * AGI additionally suffers from the fact that its ability to return information is severely limited. Each AGI command results in a single code (which isn’t consistently used to indicate error or success) and many of the actually useful pieces of information you want returned from AGI actually have to come in the form of channel variables. Channel variables aren’t technically part of AGI at all, but rather the responsibility of the dialplan application that created them. This makes documentation difficult. * AGI (and dialplan) have hard-coded limits of 1024 bytes of input. This causes all kinds of breakage when you need to pass more data, such as a long text-to-speech string * AMI and AGI were not invented
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 12:31 PM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: None of said “discussion” ever happened on the lists nor was the broader Asterisk community involved as far as I can determine. A parallel “discussion” was started by a shill at AstiCon this year to begin to get the “vast unwashed” onboard with ARI/Stasis, that is, so that Matt could come back from AstiCon claiming that the broader Asterisk community is in agreement that ARI/Stasis is the future of Asterisk and that the dial plan can be deprecated. I'm not going to take the time to comment on every trivial detail here, but I'd be remiss if I didn't highight a few things. First, Asterisk development (including ARI) happened in the open. It's been discussed at the Asterisk Developer Conferences, on the mailing lists, etc. While some people have suggested that they'd like to move completely to ARI, I personally don't think that we'll see a complete move away from the dialplan anytime in the next ten years. That being said, I'm glad that the people who *want* to move away from the dialplan are more easily able to do so now. Part of that stems from the fact that Asterisk has traditionally been a PBX, and is now moving to also be a media engine. For some of my own personal projects, I'll probably never move away from the dialplan. For others, the dialplan is something I can live without. While the majority of the people in the room at AstriDevCon were in agreement that ARI/Stasis *is* part of the future of Asterisk, I don't think there was anywhere close to a majority that thought the dial plan can be deprecated. Second, let me state that attacking the people in this channel doesn't help your case -- let's keep things civil here and debate *what* is right, not *who is right*. By using inflammatory language, you're just making other developers in this channel *less* likely to take you seriously, not more likely. I'd personally never want this channel to just become an echo chamber, but it does need to be safe space where people feel like they can share their opinions and ideas. If people feel threatened or belittled, they're much more likely to be hostile to your opinions or ideas. -- Jared Smith -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
Not asking for unqualified promises about the future of Asterisk. Simply asking for an acknowledgment of the obvious, that is, Asterisk without the dial plan wouldn’t be Asterisk. The fact that one is not forthcoming raises a red flag with respect to the future of Asterisk. Furthermore, adding “asynchronous AGI” and ARI/Stasis to Asterisk is similarly a cause for concern since it’s a complete break with the original Asterisk design. Since Asterisk is an open source community supported project, one would expect the consultants/developers pushing these changes would be willing to share their vision with the rest of the Asterisk community. On Oct 27, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Jeffrey Ollie j...@ocjtech.us wrote: On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: The reason the dial plan can never be deprecated is because Asterisk wouldn’t be Asterisk without the dial plan. Sure, you could re-engineer Asterisk so that it would be “better for a small select group of users at the expense of the majority of community that use the product as designed for the purpose it was originally intended. However, you’re either very naive or delusional if you think the community is going to follow you down that path. Do you really believe the community is going simply chuck their dial plans and walk away from their investment in Asterisk? Not likely, dude. My comment/question wasn't really about dial plans, per se. My question was about you insisting that Digium make such unqualified promises about the future of Asterisk. Even though Digium is a private company, I believe that they are still bound by U.S. laws regarding forward-looking statements[1]. So even if they wanted to (which I doubt), there's no way you're going to get the promise that you're looking for. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-looking_statement -- Jeff Ollie -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
So. After all this I'm tired of hearing the same argument. I've decided to take the other side. I have seen the progression of Asterisk for the last 5+ years. I was at Astricon when it was held in the DC area and the last one in Atlanta (I wish you'd go back there instead of Vegas!). I tried to use Asterisk many times but always found it wanting. Why? I'm a programmer. I like to be able to make tools do what I want. So, I left Asterisk and moved on to FreeSWITCH. After beating my head against the FS wall for quite some time I was just about ready to give up completely. Until I saw the videos from Astricon 2013 talking about ARI. I knew immediately this is what I wanted. Over the last several months I have written a full answering service system using ARI. It is PERFECT! Would I like a few more features in ARI? Of course. I'm I blown away by how complete the new options are?. Without ARI I could've never have done what I did. Should they drop the dialplan? Please. Now. I can't believe this isn't holding back options. You really want to stick with the dialplan? Really? Fine. Do it. You have all the source code. Apparently, you use V1.4 anyway. What difference is it to you? Be honest. This has nothing to do with the Asterisk Community. It has to do with you. What you want. There are many of us who are very thankful they have moved forward. Both ARI and PJSIP. The old SIP problems were many and awful. If all you want is a standard PBX you've got it. What I want is something I can work with without having to program in C again which I gave up many, many years ago. I have no interest in going back. So, from my POV and hopefully many who will discover Asterisk again (I'm talking to you FreeSWITCHers!) ARI (and PJSIP) are the real thing. This is a very exciting time and I'm looking forward to many applications that I will be able to create. Thank you Digium and all the Asterisk developers for going in this direction. I will certainly be at Astricon next year (even if it's in LV) and you will hear me support moving forward as quickly as possible. Phil Mickelson CBA Software, LLC On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: Not asking for unqualified promises about the future of Asterisk. Simply asking for an acknowledgment of the obvious, that is, Asterisk without the dial plan wouldn’t be Asterisk. The fact that one is not forthcoming raises a red flag with respect to the future of Asterisk. Furthermore, adding “asynchronous AGI” and ARI/Stasis to Asterisk is similarly a cause for concern since it’s a complete break with the original Asterisk design. Since Asterisk is an open source community supported project, one would expect the consultants/developers pushing these changes would be willing to share their vision with the rest of the Asterisk community. On Oct 27, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Jeffrey Ollie j...@ocjtech.us wrote: On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: The reason the dial plan can never be deprecated is because Asterisk wouldn’t be Asterisk without the dial plan. Sure, you could re-engineer Asterisk so that it would be “better for a small select group of users at the expense of the majority of community that use the product as designed for the purpose it was originally intended. However, you’re either very naive or delusional if you think the community is going to follow you down that path. Do you really believe the community is going simply chuck their dial plans and walk away from their investment in Asterisk? Not likely, dude. My comment/question wasn't really about dial plans, per se. My question was about you insisting that Digium make such unqualified promises about the future of Asterisk. Even though Digium is a private company, I believe that they are still bound by U.S. laws regarding forward-looking statements[1]. So even if they wanted to (which I doubt), there's no way you're going to get the promise that you're looking for. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-looking_statement -- Jeff Ollie -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:24 AM, Phil Mickelson p...@cbasoftware.com wrote: So. After all this I'm tired of hearing the same argument. I've decided to take the other side. I have seen the progression of Asterisk for the last 5+ years. I was at Astricon when it was held in the DC area and the last one in Atlanta (I wish you'd go back there instead of Vegas!). I tried to use Asterisk many times but always found it wanting. Why? I'm a programmer. I like to be able to make tools do what I want. So, I left Asterisk and moved on to FreeSWITCH. After beating my head against the FS wall for quite some time I was just about ready to give up completely. Until I saw the videos from Astricon 2013 talking about ARI. I knew immediately this is what I wanted. Over the last several months I have written a full answering service system using ARI. It is PERFECT! Would I like a few more features in ARI? Of course. I'm I blown away by how complete the new options are?. Without ARI I could've never have done what I did. Should they drop the dialplan? Please. Now. I can't believe this isn't holding back options. You really want to stick with the dialplan? Really? Fine. Do it. You have all the source code. Apparently, you use V1.4 anyway. What difference is it to you? Be honest. This has nothing to do with the Asterisk Community. It has to do with you. What you want. There are many of us who are very thankful they have moved forward. Both ARI and PJSIP. The old SIP problems were many and awful. If all you want is a standard PBX you've got it. What I want is something I can work with without having to program in C again which I gave up many, many years ago. I have no interest in going back. So, from my POV and hopefully many who will discover Asterisk again (I'm talking to you FreeSWITCHers!) ARI (and PJSIP) are the real thing. This is a very exciting time and I'm looking forward to many applications that I will be able to create. Thank you Digium and all the Asterisk developers for going in this direction. I will certainly be at Astricon next year (even if it's in LV) and you will hear me support moving forward as quickly as possible. I LOVE this post. Thanks, Phil. Well said. I said this in my talk last week and will reiterate it here. I think the Asterisk dev community has been doing an amazing job over the last few years. Internal refactorings have been achieved that we used to dream of. A new SIP channel driver finally exists. The new API work just totally rocks. It's an absolutely critical piece of what is needed from Asterisk to fit in to the way future telephony applications should be architected in my view. Well done, dev community. Keep kicking ass. -- Russell Bryant -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
On 28 October 2014 14:44, Russell Bryant russ...@russellbryant.net wrote: On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:24 AM, Phil Mickelson p...@cbasoftware.com wrote: So. After all this I'm tired of hearing the same argument. I've decided to take the other side. I have seen the progression of Asterisk for the last 5+ years. I was at Astricon when it was held in the DC area and the last one in Atlanta (I wish you'd go back there instead of Vegas!). I tried to use Asterisk many times but always found it wanting. Why? I'm a programmer. I like to be able to make tools do what I want. So, I left Asterisk and moved on to FreeSWITCH. After beating my head against the FS wall for quite some time I was just about ready to give up completely. Until I saw the videos from Astricon 2013 talking about ARI. I knew immediately this is what I wanted. Over the last several months I have written a full answering service system using ARI. It is PERFECT! Would I like a few more features in ARI? Of course. I'm I blown away by how complete the new options are?. Without ARI I could've never have done what I did. Should they drop the dialplan? Please. Now. I can't believe this isn't holding back options. You really want to stick with the dialplan? Really? Fine. Do it. You have all the source code. Apparently, you use V1.4 anyway. What difference is it to you? Be honest. This has nothing to do with the Asterisk Community. It has to do with you. What you want. There are many of us who are very thankful they have moved forward. Both ARI and PJSIP. The old SIP problems were many and awful. If all you want is a standard PBX you've got it. What I want is something I can work with without having to program in C again which I gave up many, many years ago. I have no interest in going back. So, from my POV and hopefully many who will discover Asterisk again (I'm talking to you FreeSWITCHers!) ARI (and PJSIP) are the real thing. This is a very exciting time and I'm looking forward to many applications that I will be able to create. Thank you Digium and all the Asterisk developers for going in this direction. I will certainly be at Astricon next year (even if it's in LV) and you will hear me support moving forward as quickly as possible. I LOVE this post. Thanks, Phil. Well said. I said this in my talk last week and will reiterate it here. I think the Asterisk dev community has been doing an amazing job over the last few years. Internal refactorings have been achieved that we used to dream of. I second every one of Phil's points and this observation in particular. Trying to bend Asterisk to be capable of these sorts of things used to be the stuff of nightmares and despair. Now there is hope that complex use cases and capabilities are becoming first class citizens within the project and its community and that the stagnation and horror of earlier years is no more. This is very much appreciated and welcomed, and I hope we can contribute more going forward in whatever form we are able. A new SIP channel driver finally exists. The new API work just totally rocks. It's an absolutely critical piece of what is needed from Asterisk to fit in to the way future telephony applications should be architected in my view. Well done, dev community. Keep kicking ass. +10 -- Russell Bryant -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
What is the alternative to the dial plan? Is everyone talking about getting rid of the statements like: exten = s,1, what is the alternative? -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
On 28 October 2014 19:47, Derek Andrew derek.and...@usask.ca wrote: What is the alternative to the dial plan? Is everyone talking about getting rid of the statements like: exten = s,1, what is the alternative? Remote applications based on APIs like ARI. This is the start of the discussion, and please remember that nothing has been decided or even presented as a robust plan yet. This is brain-storming. Additionally, note that the original proposal was to deprecate AMI/AGI in favour of ARI once it is feature complete with those protocols; an entirely lesser change than the removal of the dialplan in its entirety. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
I can't speak for anyone else, but my vision would be for an easy to use application that would allow for all the options you now have and even more. The major difference is that you wouldn't have to try to figure out all the complexities of the current dialplan. For example, you could have a drag and drop type of flow chart that could be used for simple channel control. Then you could name them, almost like macros, and combine them to create more complex channel control. Or, you could use some logical language constructs that include If/Then/Else, Case, While, etc. All of those could be handled through the ARI (along with Stasis). And, combine them with a database for even more flexibility. Further, imagine that you didn't have to even reload Asterisk to get this done! That you could add new dialplans, change existing ones, and remove them completely, all in realtime. My hope is to get the ability to create extensions the same way. Then I could handle everything. BTW, I have a system, right now, that is handling incoming calls exactly like the above. I can add new phone numbers, remove them, etc and I never have to reload Asterisk. I don't have the simple to use general front end, but it wouldn't be that hard to add. I literally have a single entry point in the dialplan to handle all incoming calls. It seems to work (so far) exactly like I expect it to. Each of those phone numbers are a different customer. Depending on the customer information significantly different options are displayed to the screen. There is no way I could've done that with the existing dialplan. And, further, each time a new customer was added or removed Asterisk would've had to been reloaded. That would've been a non-starter. And, this is just one alternative. I can guarantee you that you let a bunch of programmers loose on this and you'll get a bunch of alternatives. I believe, this is exactly what the Asterisk developers were hoping for. At least, I hope it is! Hope that answers your question. Phil Mickelson CBA Software, LLC On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Derek Andrew derek.and...@usask.ca wrote: What is the alternative to the dial plan? Is everyone talking about getting rid of the statements like: exten = s,1, what is the alternative? -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014:Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
The reason the dial plan can never be deprecated is because Asterisk wouldn’t be Asterisk without the dial plan. Sure, you could re-engineer Asterisk so that it would be “better for a small select group of users at the expense of the majority of community that use the product as designed for the purpose it was originally intended. However, you’re either very naive or delusional if you think the community is going to follow you down that path. Do you really believe the community is going simply chuck their dial plans and walk away from their investment in Asterisk? Not likely, dude. On Oct 24, 2014, at 11:48 AM, Jeffrey Ollie j...@ocjtech.us wrote: On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: When Matt says deprecating the dial plan would be difficult and would take a long time it seems to me he’s being evasive and misleading. He doesn’t say it’s never going to happen and he doesn’t share whatever he thinks the Asterisk vision actually is which he should presumably be aware of since he is the Asterisk engineering manager. Why do you keep insisting that Digium promise to *never* deprecate dial plans? I don't think that's a promise that's really worth anything as there may be really good reasons in the future to do so. I think that you've gotten the best that you will get: they've said that there are no plans within Digium to deprecate the dial plan, and if there were plans, they'd give people a long time prepare before it actually happens. It's probably a good time to refresh your understanding of Digium's support policies: https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Asterisk+Versions Version 13 will be around until at least 2018, so you'll have *at least* that long to prepare for the switch, since version 13 is feature frozen so there's no way the dial plan would be removed from 13. And all of this talk of deprecating the dial plan isn't even coming from Digium. It's something that was suggested by a community member at the developer conference. I wasn't there so I don't know how seriously it was taken there, but it would have been impolite of everyone involved to just ignore it. -- Jeff Ollie -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014:Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: The reason the dial plan can never be deprecated is because Asterisk wouldn’t be Asterisk without the dial plan. Sure, you could re-engineer Asterisk so that it would be “better for a small select group of users at the expense of the majority of community that use the product as designed for the purpose it was originally intended. However, you’re either very naive or delusional if you think the community is going to follow you down that path. Do you really believe the community is going simply chuck their dial plans and walk away from their investment in Asterisk? Not likely, dude. My comment/question wasn't really about dial plans, per se. My question was about you insisting that Digium make such unqualified promises about the future of Asterisk. Even though Digium is a private company, I believe that they are still bound by U.S. laws regarding forward-looking statements[1]. So even if they wanted to (which I doubt), there's no way you're going to get the promise that you're looking for. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-looking_statement -- Jeff Ollie -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014:Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI(Ben Klang)
On Oct 23, 2014, at 1:58 PM, Kevin Larsen kevin.lar...@pioneerballoon.com wrote: From: Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com Seems like now is as good a time as any to raise these issues, in fact, sooner is better than later because once developers start down a path it’s very difficult to get them change their minds no matter how much sense it makes. The fact that developers are even considering taking away user functionality like the dial plan is in of itself a very serious problem because it demonstrates they don’t see Asterisk from the user perspective. Don’t object to extending the Asterisk user interface or changing Asterisk internals. Do object to is taking away functionality that users expect, are familiar with, and has made the Asterisk project successful. Then your experience is atypical. Asterisk has been unstable for several years as developers have continually shoveled new features into the code base over several releases. That’s not necessary objectionable, it’s even to be expected; however, at some point developers need to turn their attention to less glamorous less exciting things like stability and performance. I don't think anyone is objecting to you bringing this up, as it has been mentioned at the dev con. Perhaps it is just that the tone doesn't come across properly in an email, but you are coming across as confrontational and alarmist and it seems to be setting people on edge. Matt has already chimed in that he doesn't see how it would be possible to deprecate the dial plan at this time and even if it were possible, the process would take on the order of years, giving you plenty of time to enact any contingency plans you might need. Scott G. from Digium even posited that if it were to be removed from the core, it would likely end up as a loadable module so that it wouldn't burden those who don't need it and could be loaded for those who do. When Matt says deprecating the dial plan would be difficult and would take a long time it seems to me he’s being evasive and misleading. He doesn’t say it’s never going to happen and he doesn’t share whatever he thinks the Asterisk vision actually is which he should presumably be aware of since he is the Asterisk engineering manager. As for Scott’s suggestion, I don’t see how you can have it both ways: on the one hand ARI can’t work in an environment supporting AGI/AMI and the dial plan, and on the other you can support AGI/AMI in an optional module. It’s just not believable. If you’re not convinced, run menuconfig and look through the applications and functions sections. All of this stuff would have to change and you think that at the end of that process the dial plan would survive? I don’t think so. These developers do not exist in a vacuum, nor do they have total control over where Asterisk goes. Influence, sure, but there is still a corporate structure out there that finds it necessary to be customer oriented. They would have to be monumentally stupid (something which I haven't seen previous evidence of) to kill off the dial plan without providing a path forward for those who depend on it. Furthermore, even if they did pull a stunt so bad as to alienate half their users, the open source code would be forked so fast as to make your head spin or people would migrate to other similar packages (Freeswitch comes to mind). Digium sells their own PBX hardware that I am sure depends on these technologies that you are afraid will go away. They have direct skin in this game too. Totally get why Ben Klang thinks everyone should use adhearsion and that all the resources of the Asterisk community should be devoted to his project. But of course everyone thinks their project is the most important project in the world. What I don’t get is why one project or framework is deemed to be so important that is trumps everyone else in the Asterisk community. I would be interested to know just how atypical my experience is. I have found that on my 1.6 systems I would have random crashes over time. After upgrading over multiple sites, my 11.x systems have been rock solid for the most part. I did have a case where I did a store and forward of a fax that if I tried to forward the fax and it had no file to forward would cause a crash, but other than that, I haven't seen any problems in normal day to day usage. I always thought that the general consensus was that the 11.x series was quite a bit more stable than the older versions. Wouldn’t use the 1.6 release as a basis of comparison as that release was regarded as DOA by most folks. A better example would be Asterisk 1.4. We use it because it’s stable, we don’t need any of the new features and definitely want to avoid the performance degradation in the later releases. Having said that, Asterisk 1.6 was an interesting release because that’s when “async agi” was introduced and
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014:Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI(Ben Klang)
On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: When Matt says deprecating the dial plan would be difficult and would take a long time it seems to me he’s being evasive and misleading. He doesn’t say it’s never going to happen and he doesn’t share whatever he thinks the Asterisk vision actually is which he should presumably be aware of since he is the Asterisk engineering manager. Why do you keep insisting that Digium promise to *never* deprecate dial plans? I don't think that's a promise that's really worth anything as there may be really good reasons in the future to do so. I think that you've gotten the best that you will get: they've said that there are no plans within Digium to deprecate the dial plan, and if there were plans, they'd give people a long time prepare before it actually happens. It's probably a good time to refresh your understanding of Digium's support policies: https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Asterisk+Versions Version 13 will be around until at least 2018, so you'll have *at least* that long to prepare for the switch, since version 13 is feature frozen so there's no way the dial plan would be removed from 13. And all of this talk of deprecating the dial plan isn't even coming from Digium. It's something that was suggested by a community member at the developer conference. I wasn't there so I don't know how seriously it was taken there, but it would have been impolite of everyone involved to just ignore it. -- Jeff Ollie -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI(Ben Klang)
On Oct 22, 2014, at 3:39 PM, Matthew Jordan mjor...@digium.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 1:55 PM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: On Oct 22, 2014, at 11:31 AM, Matthew Jordan mjor...@digium.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: On Oct 22, 2014, at 10:33 AM, Joshua Colp jc...@digium.com wrote: Paul Albrecht wrote: Really? Shouldn’t something this major affecting the entire Asterisk community get discussed on the lists? Any idea what Leif is talking about when he says the community is in transition, moving from dial plan model to external control. It was something Ben Klang brought up and wanted to talk about - it's not something that has been decided 'nor does anyone know what the future entails. Any further discussions will naturally occur on the mailing list and in fact some things have explicit action items to bring them up on here. The suggestion that Asterisk should consider deprecating AMI/AGI is “crazy talk.” It doesn’t merit discussion and shouldn’t be on the agenda in the first place. It’s completely impractical and can never happen. Moreover, Leif seems to think we (the asterisk community) are in transition. What does that mean? Are we abandoning the dial plan? Seriously? That’s never gonna happen either. ARI isn’t easier to use than dial plan scripting. I guess one could hope that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”, but I don’t think the Asterisk community has that kind of luck. Just because someone decided to bring up a radical idea does not mean we refuse to discuss it. So you agree that deprecating AMI/AGI is “crazy talk” but you’ll discuss it because of your open-mindedness? I didn't say that the idea of deprecating AMI/AGI is crazy talk. I did say that radical ideas - and even ones that some folks think are crazy - are all fine to discuss at AstriDevCon. The whole point of AstriDevCon is to have a large, free, and open conversation about Asterisk Development. I fundamentally disagree with the notion that that should be discouraged. The problem with AstriConDev is there is no user input so what you have is a developer echo chamber and what you get is groupthink. This is an open source project. Communication is done in an open, transparent manner. People should feel like they can bring up interesting, radical, and yes - even crazy - ideas. By the same token, when you propose ideas, you must be prepared for honest criticism and accept it in graciously rather than simply resorting to argument ad hominem. You didn't have honest criticism. You labelled a discussion point as crazy talk and said we shouldn't have even discussed it. There was no ad hominem attack. I never attacked you. I never even attacked your statements. I simply defended the free exchange of ideas in AstriDevCon. I have no problem doing that. On the other hand, you did callously label an Asterisk Developer's admittedly ambitious idea as crazy talk. In the future, you may want to choose your language more carefully if you wish for others to have a more open discussion with you. If you don't like that, you don't have to participate in the discussion. You haven’t really responded to the substance of my post, that is, is asterisk abandoning the dial plan? There are Asterisk users (who also happen to develop) who would like to minimize the dialplan necessary in their systems, to the point where they may no longer even need the dialplan. This is a fundamentally sound idea for some systems, particularly those that require scaling Asterisk out to many machines. There are also some Asterisk users who build complex applications on top of Asterisk, and who find having to use multiple interfaces cumbersome. They like ARI, and would like to see it able to do more than what it currently does today. Don’t have a problem with extending the Asterisk user interface or changing Asterisk internals that are not visible to users. Do object to taking away taking away user functionality like the dial plan that users expect, are familiar with, and has made the Asterisk project successful. Fully deprecating a feature in Asterisk is non-trivial. You must have: (1) A logical and full replacement for the feature (2) Buy-off from the developer community (3) Several major versions of the project in which the deprecated feature must remain Even in the case of point #3, deprecated features have often lasted in *many* versions of Asterisk. We are enormously conservative in what we choose to remove from the project. Not interested in what rules or process steps need to be followed to deprecate features. The fact of the matter is you’re not starting with a blank sheet of paper and you can’t simply abandon the existing user interface because what will really happen is your users will abandon you and your project.
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014:Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI(Ben Klang)
On Oct 22, 2014, at 3:27 PM, Kevin Larsen kevin.lar...@pioneerballoon.com wrote: From: Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com Here’s a link to the minutes: https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/ display/AST/AstriDevCon+2014 It has you saying: Leif: we're in a transition, moving from dialplan model to external control model. Probably need external application to be built for us to move completely away from AMI/AGI. So you’re saying Asterisk is moving away from the dial plan or were you misquoted? Paul, I think you are getting worked up way too early in this process. This is one comment with only a little bit of context surrounding it. Such a major change would take quite awhile to make and there would be plenty of warning before it happens, with plenty of opportunities to discuss. The dial plan isn't going away tomorrow and if it does ever go away, there will be plenty of time to work out a transition plan. Seems like now is as good a time as any to raise these issues, in fact, sooner is better than later because once developers start down a path it’s very difficult to get them change their minds no matter how much sense it makes. The fact that developers are even considering taking away user functionality like the dial plan is in of itself a very serious problem because it demonstrates they don’t see Asterisk from the user perspective. Looking at the path development has taken, it seems pretty clear that they have been working towards enabling greater external control of what Asterisk does, making it the engine that can drive other media applications. Doesn't mean it can't and won't be used as a traditional pbx, but to grow what it does will require some changes. If being a mature part of Asterisk means that something shouldn't be changed, we should also protest the move from the current SIP stack to pjsip. There are any number of reasons to deprecate mature code. It may not be needed or something better may come along. Don’t object to extending the Asterisk user interface or changing Asterisk internals. Do object to is taking away functionality that users expect, are familiar with, and has made the Asterisk project successful. All I can say is that having experience with a few versions of Asterisk, it seems to get better and more stable as new versions come along. Perhaps a bit of faith that they are not trying to kill off their product simply by having a discussion at a dev conference is in order. Then your experience is atypical. Asterisk has been unstable for several years as developers have continually shoveled new features into the code base over several releases. That’s not necessary objectionable, it’s even to be expected; however, at some point developers need to turn their attention to less glamorous less exciting things like stability and performance. Kevin Larsen -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI(Ben Klang)
On Oct 23, 2014, at 1:55 AM, Olle E Johansson o...@edvina.net wrote: It is critical that a group of developers ask themself questions along these lines - what if??? - What if we removed AGi and AMI? - What if we made a pluggable PBX? - What if we restarted working on a SIP channel? - What if we made a whole new bridge architecture? - What if we skip the idea of making a PBX? Good development quite frequently starts with these kind of ideas and questions that may see crazy but results in really good changes. Brainstorms needs to be open and not restricted, that is what the astridevcons are for. We need to go wild and see what comes out of it. A lot of the great changes we see in Asterisk 13 comes from many years of wild discussions. Pinemango anyone? The unacknowledged problem we’re dealing with is the fact that we’re not starting with a blank sheet of paper, but rather a mature user interface that users expect, are familiar with, and has made project successful. Extending the the user interface is one thing, throwing it away is another entirely different thing. But hey, you have the user's community attention at Astricon, why not have the courage of your convictions and announce to the the unwashed masses you’re planning to do away with the dial plan? /O -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
[asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
Really? Shouldn’t something this major affecting the entire Asterisk community get discussed on the lists? Any idea what Leif is talking about when he says the community is in transition, moving from dial plan model to external control. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI (Ben Klang)
Paul Albrecht wrote: Really? Shouldn’t something this major affecting the entire Asterisk community get discussed on the lists? Any idea what Leif is talking about when he says the community is in transition, moving from dial plan model to external control. It was something Ben Klang brought up and wanted to talk about - it's not something that has been decided 'nor does anyone know what the future entails. Any further discussions will naturally occur on the mailing list and in fact some things have explicit action items to bring them up on here. Cheers, -- Joshua Colp Digium, Inc. | Senior Software Developer 445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - US Check us out at: www.digium.com www.asterisk.org -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI(Ben Klang)
On Oct 22, 2014, at 10:33 AM, Joshua Colp jc...@digium.com wrote: Paul Albrecht wrote: Really? Shouldn’t something this major affecting the entire Asterisk community get discussed on the lists? Any idea what Leif is talking about when he says the community is in transition, moving from dial plan model to external control. It was something Ben Klang brought up and wanted to talk about - it's not something that has been decided 'nor does anyone know what the future entails. Any further discussions will naturally occur on the mailing list and in fact some things have explicit action items to bring them up on here. The suggestion that Asterisk should consider deprecating AMI/AGI is “crazy talk.” It doesn’t merit discussion and shouldn’t be on the agenda in the first place. It’s completely impractical and can never happen. Moreover, Leif seems to think we (the asterisk community) are in transition. What does that mean? Are we abandoning the dial plan? Seriously? That’s never gonna happen either. ARI isn’t easier to use than dial plan scripting. I guess one could hope that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”, but I don’t think the Asterisk community has that kind of luck. Cheers, -- Joshua Colp Digium, Inc. | Senior Software Developer 445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - US Check us out at: www.digium.com www.asterisk.org -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI(Ben Klang)
On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: On Oct 22, 2014, at 10:33 AM, Joshua Colp jc...@digium.com wrote: Paul Albrecht wrote: Really? Shouldn’t something this major affecting the entire Asterisk community get discussed on the lists? Any idea what Leif is talking about when he says the community is in transition, moving from dial plan model to external control. It was something Ben Klang brought up and wanted to talk about - it's not something that has been decided 'nor does anyone know what the future entails. Any further discussions will naturally occur on the mailing list and in fact some things have explicit action items to bring them up on here. The suggestion that Asterisk should consider deprecating AMI/AGI is “crazy talk.” It doesn’t merit discussion and shouldn’t be on the agenda in the first place. It’s completely impractical and can never happen. Moreover, Leif seems to think we (the asterisk community) are in transition. What does that mean? Are we abandoning the dial plan? Seriously? That’s never gonna happen either. ARI isn’t easier to use than dial plan scripting. I guess one could hope that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”, but I don’t think the Asterisk community has that kind of luck. Just because someone decided to bring up a radical idea does not mean we refuse to discuss it. This is an open source project. Communication is done in an open, transparent manner. People should feel like they can bring up interesting, radical, and yes - even crazy - ideas. If you don't like that, you don't have to participate in the discussion. -- Matthew Jordan Digium, Inc. | Engineering Manager 445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA Check us out at: http://digium.com http://asterisk.org -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI(Ben Klang)
On 10/22/14, 12:14 PM, Paul Albrecht wrote: On Oct 22, 2014, at 10:33 AM, Joshua Colp jc...@digium.com wrote: Paul Albrecht wrote: Really? Shouldn’t something this major affecting the entire Asterisk community get discussed on the lists? Any idea what Leif is talking about when he says the community is in transition, moving from dial plan model to external control. It was something Ben Klang brought up and wanted to talk about - it's not something that has been decided 'nor does anyone know what the future entails. Any further discussions will naturally occur on the mailing list and in fact some things have explicit action items to bring them up on here. The suggestion that Asterisk should consider deprecating AMI/AGI is “crazy talk.” It doesn’t merit discussion and shouldn’t be on the agenda in the first place. It’s completely impractical and can never happen. Moreover, Leif seems to think we (the asterisk community) are in transition. What does that mean? Are we abandoning the dial plan? Seriously? That’s never gonna happen either. ARI isn’t easier to use than dial plan scripting. I guess one could hope that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”, but I don’t think the Asterisk community has that kind of luck. It doesn't merit discussions and shouldn't be on the agenda in the first place. Really? Paul, aside from the Digium team, everyone else that's there at DevCon have spent outside funds to get there and I think the consortium is pretty well able to discuss whatever they'd like regardless of your dictator like statements which goes against everything that an open sourced project/community is supposed to be. There have been years where I'm able to attend DevCon and there have been other years, like this one, where I'm not able to attend because of prior business commitments. In the prior years where I haven't been able to attend, I don't personally feel like anything major was implemented without first being vetted with the list and community at large. I'm not really sure why you perceive the whole AstriDevCon event to be some kind of conspiracy theory against the community at large, but knowing both Josh, Leif, and many other people in that room for some number of years now, I can assure you that I've never seen anything other than 100% transparency. You've made more than clear in prior posts to this forum that you're not really a fan of ARI. I think we all get it. There are other people that are fans and, for them, they're in transition to using it in a more mainstream fashion because it's able to do things for them that AMI and AGI cannot. I personally still use AGI and AMI in many production scenarios with Asterisk today and I'm only just thinking lately about certain applications that I could transition to ARI. We cannot discount that there's a very large cost for the developers, testers, and the community at large to continue to keep AMI/AGI maintained and functionally up to date with all the Asterisk changes along with ARI given the way that AMI/AGI were originally implemented in the codebase. For people that are absolutely hooked on still using AMI/AGI in the longer term, perhaps a discussion could ensue at some point about a bridge with AMI/AGI functionality being built off of ARI itself, or maybe that's just crazy talk. I really don't know. The great thing about Asterisk and the community around it is that if there's enough participation and interest, anything can happen. BJ -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
Re: [asterisk-dev] AstriDevCon 2014: Agenda item Deprecate AMI/AGI(Ben Klang)
On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 9:14 AM, Paul Albrecht palbre...@glccom.com wrote: The suggestion that Asterisk should consider deprecating AMI/AGI is “crazy talk.” It doesn’t merit discussion and shouldn’t be on the agenda in the first place. It’s completely impractical and can never happen. Moreover, Leif seems to think we (the asterisk community) are in transition. What does that mean? Are we abandoning the dial plan? Seriously? That’s never gonna happen either. ARI isn’t easier to use than dial plan scripting. I guess one could hope that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”, but I don’t think the Asterisk community has that kind of luck. I still think it is crazy we didn't all agree finally naming the testsuite was a big deal. -- Paul Belanger | PolyBeacon, Inc. Jabber: paul.belan...@polybeacon.com | IRC: pabelanger (Freenode) Github: https://github.com/pabelanger | Twitter: https://twitter.com/pabelanger -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
