[Kamailio-Users] [Kamailio-Devel] 1.4.0 release plans, project matters

[Bogdan-Andrei Iancu]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the comprehensive email -  even if it took me  some time to 
read it, I have to admit this is a good analysis that pin points some of 
the problems that lead to the new project.

As it is quite impossible to comment is single chunk, I made some inline 
comments.

Best regards,
Bogdan

Alex Balashov wrote:
> I would strongly concur with Darren here on all counts.
>
> I don't, of course, have any sort of inside perspective as I am not 
> involved in development, so I can't presume to judge the merits or 
> veracity of the various justifications given for this adventure.  Apart 
> from Bogdan-Andrei's brief treatment of the subject, explanations 
> haven't been particularly forthcoming to the community;  this seems to 
> be a back-room affair that is still playing out.
>
>   
[bogdan]
to be honest I preferred not to put details about the arguments as I did 
want people to think I'm pointing burning fingers or I'm blaming  
something or somebody. Of the arguments are to be found on the 
discussions from the board list, but this is not public.
> There are, certainly, times in the life of an open-source project where 
> a code fork may be justifiable;  irreconcilable differences over 
> development methodologies, project management practices, and overall 
> design philosophy and direction/roadmap may figure into these.  Also, 
> what Bogdan-Andrei has put forth concerning his freedom to pursue this 
> undertaking in light of prevailing and officially codified open-source 
> precepts is factually valid and logically ostensible.
>   
[bogdan]
thank you.
> Now, that having been said, from the perspective of a user contemplating 
> the adoption of OpenSER in a serious industrial application, or worse, a 
> businessperson who has sunk substantial investment into deployment of 
> OpenSER, this is really, really bad.
>
> Much of the value of open-source projects comes from the fact that 
> despite the range of political characteristics potentially colouring the 
> development and its management (from profoundly hierarchical, as in the 
> case of the Linux kernel, to rather loose coupled and organic, as seems 
> to be the case with OpenSER), comes from certain rational expectations 
> that one holds regarding their security, stability, consistency and 
> continuity.  Industry is just as afraid of "fly-by-night" open source 
> packages as it is of fly-by-night vendors that may not be around tomorrow.
>
>   
[bogdan]
First of all, depends of how do you want to see the change: I see it as 
a progress (actually this is the reason). None of the so far 
values/investments are lost or degradated - they are carried on the next 
versions/forms. It is like natural evolution - nothing disappears, 
everything evolves.
> Generally, when one chooses to invest in a rather serious and evolving 
> open-source solution like OpenSER, one expects the following things:
>
> 1. The project will be around next year, more or less in its present state.
>   
[bogdan]
actually this was one of the main reasons of the new OpenSIPS project. 
Unproper management in OpenSER was really affecting its future existence 
- the trademark problem was known since March with a deadline in 
September; I personally worked out the arrangement  to have 6 months to 
do the transitions; but there was not management strength to do it and 
as a result 5 months were wasted and with ~ one month before the 
deadline a new name was selected; even so , no clear transition actions 
were taken (like SVN migration, website migration), etc....
> 2. Its development is coloured by a relatively consistent methodology; 
> even if the original core developers no longer contribute heavily to the 
> code base itself, their oversight, direction, vision, method and 
> quality-control is realised in the activities of those to which that 
> work has been delegated.
>   
[bogdan]
there was no such system - in the last year, any person was component 
enough to vote or take decisions in important technical matter. This is 
not a methodology and the result was the quality degradation.
> The sources of that direction and influence must be relatively cohesive 
> and clearly identifiable.
>
> 3. In the case of something relatively low-level and niche like OpenSER, 
> a thriving ecosystem of first and third-party contributors and vendors 
> of commercial support must exist.  Nobody is going to trail-blaze 
> without any sense of reliance on anybody in particular.  This heavily 
> depends on #2, and on the consistency of the project as a unitary thing.
>   
[bogdan]
again, there is no such system - unfortunately there is only a large 
pool of people with no relation between. Such a system cannot offer 
unity and clearness.
> 4. The project will retain a unitary character as much as possible; 
> there will not be bewildering an array of species and subspecies of the 
> code which will contain varying degrees of features, quality control, 
> bug fixes, and developer and organisational affinities.  All such 
> choices involve trade-offs that are unacceptable in serious work, 
> especially when the trade-offs involve some form of playing roulette, 
> gambling on the meritocratic superiority and pre-eminence of a 
> particular version and not another and its longevity.
>
>   
[bogdan]
perfectly agreed.

So far, coming from the requirements direction, you pin pointed some 
aspects I found as problems in current OpenSER.
> ...
>
> This type of code work heavily upsets these expectations and decreases 
> overall confidence in the project, which, especially in open-source, is 
> so profoundly a function of the people behind it and the ecosystem it 
> cultivates.
>   
[bogdan]
I agree and as I said before, taking the decision of crating OpenSIPS 
was one of the most difficult I ever done. I 'm aware of the impact it 
has, but I look into the future and my present actions wants to secure 
the project (under whatever name) for the future. Form my perspective, 
looking back over the last year, I do not see any evolution with OpenSER 
- just take a look at release 1.2 and release 1.4 (future) and tell me 
it is the same - going in the same direction is dead-end.
> How do I know whether the latest bleeding-edge modules that perform 
> low-level technical enhancements or fixups won't be in OpenSIPS, but 
> ones which offer more high-level integration paths and business logic 
> interworking in Kamailio?  What kind of compatibility can I count on if 
> I wish to switch?
>
> How do I know that critical bugs applicable to pre-fork code in Kamailio 
> will be fixed in OpenSIPS, or vice versa?  At the encouragement of Juha 
> Heinenen, I just submitted a bug report about a race condition on call 
> branching to the Kamailio Tracker.  How do I know whether it's going to 
> be addressed sooner in Kamailio or in OpenSIPS, if at all?  What if this 
> type of issue is closer to Bogdan-Andrei's core competency and interest 
> than that of the remaining Kamailio developers, or vice versa?  Now I 
> have to engage in this type of guesswork and detect the political winds. 
>   I shouldn't have to do this as a user;  I was counting on one 
> development team and one mission.
>   
[bogdan]
Indeed this is a tough question. The same question was raise when 
OpenSER forked form SER and things clarified in time. Even after 3 yeas, 
you will be surprise to still see the similarities between OpenSER and SER.
> How do I know there won't be more code forks or internecine feuds?  If I 
> am a medium to large organisation with relatively high internal 
> technical capital, I may see an economic rationale in taking an existing 
> release and all maintenance of it in-house and *not* releasing the 
> changes back to the community (after all, too many "communities" to 
> choose from, if nothing else).  Or I may release it as my own code fork 
> later, once it's deviated enough.  Both of these damage and undermine 
> the incipient ecosystem surrounding OpenSER.
>   
[bogdan]
for me this is not an option.
> Code works beget more code forks and more proprietary approaches by 
> shifting the mindset of users to a self-reliant approach as a matter of 
> pragmatic necessity;  if I can't really count on the project's integrity 
> politically, there's far less incentive to build business decisions 
> around it.
>   
[bogdan]
exactly my point - there is no unity/consent/process/value in taken 
decisions with OpenSER - see what happened with the 1.4 release. Do you 
find it an example of reliability for  a business?
> Open-source contributors are also going to be less enthused about 
> contributing to a landscape full of code branches, as they have to make 
> similar bets about their relative merits and significance.
>
> As far as I can tell, OpenSER has a handful of core developers and one 
> to two dozen ancillary developers.  This isn't that big of a project 
> from an organisational perspective.  Somehow, open-source projects much 
> bigger - with much more at stake - have managed to survive without this 
> type of feuding and forking.  MySQL, the Linux kernel, Apache, and even 
> Asterisk to a relatively high degree, are all examples of projects with 
> hundreds to thousands of active contributors that do not seem to suffer 
> from these types of problems, which is why I consider them relatively 
> safe to invest in.
>   
[bogdan]
I asked myself the same question and I debated the matter with other 
people (I like to get as many opinions on some matters) - and the key 
word is control - to organize the project in such a way to be 
controllable. This does not mean to define rules, but to have a system 
that will guarantee decision making based on value - being able to make 
decisions, means you can control. It is like all the countries - there 
is a form of control across each country (government, monarchy, etc) 
that ensure the functionality of the country.
> Once again, I am not berating either side of this issue;  I don't have 
> the perspective to judge.  Likewise, I stand in awe and appreciation of 
> Bogdan-Andrei's significant technical contributions to OpenSER and the 
> offerings Voice System is poised to make, and can appreciate the 
> possible legitimate reasons he may have for wanting to make this split.
>
> But I think that I speak on behalf of the prevailing majority of users, 
> adopters, enthusiasts of and contributors to OpenSER when I implore you 
> guys to work your differences out, compromise, standardise, and merge 
> the code back into one project so that we can all continue to enjoy, 
> evolve and innovate with the best, most extensible, polymorphic and 
> featureful SIP server out there.
>
>   
[bogdan]
at least we have a consent about "enjoy, evolve and innovate".

One again, thank you for your email - it was a real pleasure to go 
thorough it.

> Cheers,
>
> -- Alex
>
>
> Darren Sessions wrote:
>
>   
>> I can't tell you all how worrying another fork of SER or OpenSER is to me. 
>>
>> I have worked, known, or at least met most of the people in SER -> 
>> OpenSER -> OpenSIPS groups in some fashion over the last five or six 
>> years starting back with Jiri and Bogdan at iptel. 
>>
>> I obviously don't understand what's going on that could possibly cause a 
>> project fork but I think I can speak for a number of people as a 
>> former commercial support customer, present user, source tinkerer, and 
>> occasional consultant - when I say that this really does put a dark 
>> cloud over ALL of the projects. 
>>
>> To start splitting up the core developers -again- between projects, to 
>> me, seems absolutely insane!
>>
>> This makes me extremely nervous going forward with either project and I 
>> will be (as most will be) watching closely as this situation continues 
>> to unfold and details emerge.
>>     
>
>