[Serusers] open letter: ser, tls, openser

[Peter Griffiths]

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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