[Serdev] A suggestion for how SER should focus - was: So who/what is SER for, anyway?

[Daniel-Constantin Mierla]

On 01/25/07 19:14, Andrei Pelinescu-Onciul wrote:
> [...]
>>   
>> When OpenSER was forked, I hoped that they will have the power to do
>> that, but this did not really happen there either (let's not flame about
>> SER/OpenSER now). What would it take for this to happen? Because in the
>> current state SER's "flexibility" is killing SER itself by making it too
>> hard to do high-level scenarios. Beginners use asterisk and experts just
>> start from scratch with a simple SIP stack. For example, every time that
>> I have to add a new feature in the Open IMS Core, dealing with simple
>> things is so complicated that I constantly consider dropping SER as a
>> base for my project and just use a normal SIP stack (like pjsip for
>> example).
>>     
>
> Actually I'm very curious what the OpenSer developers would say about
> this. It might be that only you see the need for a big change.
>   
... a bit late, but here it is my opinion, which coincides with some of 
the conclusions of this thread.

 From time to time everybody discovers that a need for the moment gets 
stuck because of an old design. But if you put it in balance with the 
previous needs, then you may think that the old decision was the best 
and now you should find a solution in the current context.

If the design would have been bad, the project would not have been 
successful. The mistake here is that one tries to get everything from 
one application, even when the application was created with other goals 
in mind. There are other VoIP projects out there that can give you a 
good b2bua, where you can manage messages within a SIP stack, don't 
fight with lumps, with custom memory/locking manager, a.s.o., but they 
have other issues in terms of performance, flexibility and routing 
capabilities.

As proved so far, thinks are changing when they block evolution of a 
project, but as long as current architecture still does its job very 
well, there is no reason to change. The result Dragos got to it by 
himself is to contribute and collaborate to improve any application he 
is using, rather than complaining (remembers me 'Harry!!!' ;-) ). 
Although the mailing lists of both projects are open, I haven't seen any 
mail from him proposing new design or enhancements (just as note, 
without flaming: openser was not created to develop Dragos' unspoken 
needs and thoughts, to say today "Hey, Dragos, see, we foresaw your 
thoughts and here you are, everything you need, just like that!"). He 
was a lone runner, and he should blame himself if after I do not know 
how much time he discovered he went in the wrong direction, using wrong 
tools.

Cheers,
Daniel

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