Taste Testing Asterisk Releases

[wardmundy]

What happens when an ostrich drinks too much Asterisk Kool-Aid? See this thread for all the answers...

 

[darmock]

Careful Ward you know how the sensitive types are....


Have a good weekend!


Tom

 

[Hat]

Absolutely mind-boggling...the product manager for Digium in that thread has stated:

...And yes, if I were personally building a derivative product today, I would be likely to choose 1.8. For me, access to those features is more important than rock-solid stability. That's me, personally. The two thoughts are not opposed, even if you want to paint them that way for the sake of argument.

Features over rock-solid stability???? He's the product manager???

He also states:

Naming Asterisk 1.8 as a "Long Term Support" release does not mean it is magically bug-free. Instead, it means the community is making a long-term commitment to this version, so users can make informed planning decisions.

Now in my very limited brain capacity, I understand that once software comes out of RC status it usually goes to GA status. Well according to Wikipedia, GA status is:

It is also at this stage that the software is considered to have "gone live". The production, live version is the final version of a particular product. A live release is considered to be very stable and relatively bug-free with a quality suitable for wide distribution and use by end users. In commercial software releases, this version may also be signed (used to allow end-users to verify that code has not been modified since the release). The expression that a software product "has gone live" means that the code has been completed and is ready for distribution. Other terms for the live version include live master, live release, and live build.

Yes, I understand there will be bugs in a live release, but not the show stoppers that have been reported. Asterisk 1.8 is far from relatively bug free. Between the FreePBX thread and the other thread(s) in this forum, that's painfully obvious.

 

[blanchae]

Asterisk is free right? So, until we start paying for it, we get what we get. Once in a while, things get screwed up.

 

[dswartz]

eugene, respectfully, you are missing a rather important point. what is causing the dismay is not the bugs involved, but the (apparent) cavalier attitude of the product manager.

 

[wardmundy]

The Rest of the Story...

Free isn't quite the whole story. Digium makes substantial revenue off software sold pursuant to their dual license. And one can't help wondering how much hardware, support, consulting services, and how many software add-ons such as Fax for Asterisk, Skype for Asterisk plus G.729, Lumenvox, and Vestec licenses they would sell if it weren't for the "free" Asterisk. So, yes, it's free... but with a big fat *.

 

[The Deacon]

...And yes, if I were personally building a derivative product today, I would be likely to choose 1.8. For me, access to those features is more important than rock-solid stability. That's me, personally. The two thoughts are not opposed, even if you want to paint them that way for the sake of argument.

I would have expected that from a sales manager who is struggling to make his quota... NOT from the product manager. Really?!? Wow.

 

[dswartz]

Don't forget the dev (I think it was one of them) who said they couldn't test changes against every product out there. Sure, but (as someone pointed out), polycom and cisco are probably the two leading vendors in this space, and recent regressions broke both of them.

 

[wardmundy]

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