Hi Everybody,
I have tried to be open to the benefits and merits of the openser
initiative, and allthough I welcome the ideas on an added "fast-track
release", as well as web-based and editable documentation, I agree
completely with Peter and everything he mentions in his open letter. Thank
you, Peter! (I can also add to his list that the people behind openser have
not contributed to the
ONsip.org Getting Started documentation effort and
this effort is not even mentioned on the openser website. However, Jan and
Jiri have been very positive and helped us out.)
So, even though some of the things in the openser initiative are good,
the chosen approach is ALL wrong.
For what it's worth, I have thus decided that I will continue to
contribute on the serusers and serdev lists and here only. This includes
anything related to contributions to the experimental tree.
I hereby encourage the
iptelorg.com guys to take the input received from
all parties and independently of the openser initiative come up with a plan
for improving the aspects of the project that have been pointed out. I hope
the people behind the openser initiative will bring their excellent
documentation skills and drive for new features to a revitalised SER
project. If they don't, let them carry on.
Best regards,
Greger
g-)
PS! I will do my best to ensure that
ONsip.org continues to be a place for
Getting Started information, links, downloads, FAQs etc without any politics
(i.e. anyone registered can submit links and downloads. In addition, we will
try to add any resource that can be of value). Hopefully this will
contribute to reducing the confusion.
Peter Griffiths wrote:
folks --
i usually do not participate in mailing list
discussions but it seems that my tls contribution
became hot topic in recent ser vs. openser discussions
so i think i will make an exception here.
i think that openser is a bad idea. please stop using
the tls code as a hostage in this dispute, i did not
write it to fork the project.
iptel guys made no attempt to hide the code when i
approached them although they probably have their own
commercial implementation. for me ser is an open and
free project because:
1. i could download ser freely and use it
2. i needed tls, i was not able to buy it from iptel
so i tried to implement it
3. i sent it to the mailing lists, anyone can find it
there and use it if they want
4. someone else picked up the code, improved it
and committed to cvs (thank you for this, by the
way)
what can be more open than this ? maybe sources stored
in a wiki where anyone can change anything.
openser claims that it will be more open, but:
1. over 20 people have access to ser cvs on berlios,
but only 4 have access to openser cvs on
sourceforge, not even other developers.
2. you took existing code from ser cvs, added your own
improvements, but you did not give other
developers who work on ser any chance to say
whether such changes should be included or not,
although they are still listed in AUTHORS file,
in module documentation and elsewhere. from
the user point of view they will be responsible for
bugs introduced by you and have no chance to
influence it.
3. i did not see any discussion about this move, it is
a bit strange that the people on the lists were not
allowed to participate in the decision, especially
if you claim that it is for the interest of the
community. how do you know people want the project
to be split when you did not ask ?
4. the complete cvs history is missing in openser
repository, effectively hiding who contributed
what.
I also noticed that user miconda created project
named ser on sourceforge, is this a preparation for
the next step - full control ? did other ser
developers know about this ? i think having two
projects with the same name on two sites is
confusing. from my perspective the new fork is
only an attempt to get more power and control
over the sources. it is about who will control what,
not about freedom. try to resolve it without forking
the project.
if ser is bad then openser is not any better:
-
iptel.org advertises
iptelorg.com on its webpage -
there is an ad of voice-system on the main page of
openser.org, there are voice-system copyright
statements and readme states that the project is
maintained by voice-systems, proving beyond
reasonable doubts that openser promotes
voice-systems just like ser promotes
iptel.org
- there were complaints about maintainers deciding
what comes into modules - so in openser only
selected people have access to cvs and they will
probably form a committee and decide.
- there were calls for more discussions, but the fork
was not discussed at all
there probably is a good reason why tls was put in
experimental directory first and is not in the main
tree yet, i do not see this as a problem. in fact i
would appreciate if someone who knows in detail
how tcp code in ser works could review the code before
it is committed in the main tree. there are many
places in the code i don't understand. i did only
limited testing because tls support in end devices is
virtually
non-existent. use it at your own risk.
i don't know about others, but i am on alert when
people talk about "the needs of the community" and
"take over when someone is very busy or unwilling to
cooperate", i don't remember seeing users asking for
anything like this.
-- peter
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