This is a very interesting converation, but it seems like the BIZ forum
might be more appropriate...
Michael Crown
Managing Partner
www.thevoipconnection.com
321.989.6728 ext. 611
sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-Original Message-
From: Lee Howard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2005 11:30 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Re: Asterisk forking, Was:
Digium Website Update:Asterisk Business Edition
Andrew Kohlsmith wrote:
On Saturday 11 June 2005 19:51, Lee Howard wrote:
I don't think that lack of mindshare completely defines
the reasons
behind Asterisk fork failures. It places all of the blame on the
forkers. I think the truth, though, is that they not only
fail due to
lack of mindshare but also due to competition from Digium's own
Asterisk community. Forks are not succeeding, yes, but
Digium has a
hand in that... of course they do.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious: how does Digium have a
hand in a fork failing?
That's what I tried to explain in my last post, in particular
after this first statement. Forks enter a hostile
competition rather than a healthy competition.
I've heard more talk about Asterisk forks than I've ever
heard about
forks of any other other open-source project. I think that
this says
something about how difficult-to-swallow Digium's
dual-license decree
is for a lot of prospective contributors/developers.
I disagree; if it were that hard to swallow the project
would either be
90% digium-written (it's not) or it would be a total flop
(again it's not).
If you (or someone else reading this post) is in a position
to give statistics on what percentage of the code is
Digium-written (or Digium-rewritten - in the case where a
disclaimer is not obtained for some unpatented work and
Digium rewrites the work independently) then I would be
thrilled to see it.
We see this happen all of the time with the Linux kernel.
It happens
with HylaFAX. It happened with X. I'm sure it happens a lot with
many other open-source software projects. It happens easily and
usually is a healthy process because the playing field is even.
Agreed. But where are the successful Asterisk forks?
I don't know of any successful Asterisk forks (unless
http://www.asteriskwin32.com is considered successful -
although I'll admit that I'm not really in-the-know). But
this was my point: that the way things were set up by Digium
makes a successful fork difficult.
Digium always has an upper-hand, and things were set up
intentionally this way. Again, I don't take particular issue
with this. I'm just trying to explain why forking Asterisk
would not be a particularly easy task.
Of course, this healthy forking cannot be done with
Asterisk because
Digium will not accept any non-disclaimed code into their
repository.
... What you'd described about distribution-maintained patches has
nothing to do with this. Digium could take a
distribution-maintained
patch and rewrite it into Asterisk proper under the dual license (as
could any other
contributor) and you'd still gain the benefit of the patch. I'm not
sure I see where you're going here.
If you (or someone else reading this) has the necessary
information to provide statistics on how what percentage of
the code comes from rewrites of non-disclaimed code, then I
would be particularly interested in hearing it. I suspect,
though, that it is a rather small - perhaps insignificant -
amount. But, yes, providing that there is not a patent
involved - yes, the work could be rewritten and integrated.
But this was my point: that given the right environment forks
can benefit from each other.
The one thing that an Asterisk fork can never do, though, is
relicense itself. Only Diguim can do that. If Digium had
wanted an equal footing in this regard then Asterisk would be
LGPL or BSD or something a bit more liberal. So if I'm a
manufacturer of PBXes and have some proprietary IP that I do
not wish to be GPLed, then if I want to use Asterisk somehow,
then I can really only work with Digium for licensing. All
of the other forks will be license-prohibitive.
I have to admit that I know quite a few people with their
own modules
and such to replace what they feel is bad code and just won't
contribute it back to Asterisk due to the friction they've received
about the patch. I, on the other hand, tend to bitch loud and
continuously enough and wear them down to the point of
accepting it.
:-)
So we're not in disagreement, it would seem. Getting code
contributions into Digium's Asterisk codebase is not
something that many average people are going to want to
undergo. From what I've seen, friction is a bit light of a
term for it. It seems much more
