John Todd "Summary:
> Would you help fund different Open-Source Asterisk enhancements,
> bugfixes, or documentation if there was a way to collectively
> contribute money towards the effort without a profit margin
A profit margin for Asterisk or Digium? Where is the line drawn here. The line was moved quite a bit with Adwords debacle.
I was not aware that Digium was a non-profit organization.
I have certainly profited from Asterisk but I also see some paradoxes to the "OpenSource" flag that Digium waives.
The dual licensing, or whatever it is now is one paradox. Another are the numerous submissions on bugtracker that sit, stagnate. Some bug fixes, some new features, the authors asking, "can someone please update this?" repeatedly, or just closed.
Another paradox is the commercial version of Asterisk and it's appliances. I cannot say for sure but I think Fonality is doing well. I don't have any figures but it was featured on full page of the last Dell catalog that I received in the mail, this may just be VC but I do get alot of requests and questions about the Fonality lineup. If that is the case, then maybe Digium needs to step up it's partnering and marketing game. 3Com is great sales channel but I don't get catalogs from them, just a monthly email that briefly mentions the Asterisk appliance.
FreeSwitch on the other hand seems to be a true OpenSource project. I even approached an unnamed person that used to be very active with the dev of Asterisk about adding functionality for profit, and was shot down, I followed up with the potential of the enhancement and the profits it would reap and no reply.
While disappointing to my entrepreneurial side, It really told me alot about FreeSwitch and the ideals.
I am not sure what conclusions or thoughts I can draw from the original post, but I think the follow-ups should be quite interesting.
--
Thanks,
Steve Totaro
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On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 9:16 AM, Paul Brown <prbrown@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't want to sound snarky, but could you offer a pointer or two to
get somebody started who wanted to find the problems (and perhaps some
suggested solutions) with the way Digium is doing Open Source? I am
genuinely interested.
Currently, I'm inclined to agree that some sort of escrow-ed
bountty-for-features type system would be beneficial. As a guy with a
telephony background but no programming, it might be useful for me to
be able to contribute cash toward solving a problem or creating a
feature that would be profitable to me. As it is, I see that I would
have 3 options...
1. Wait and hope.
2. Fund it completely - hire somebody myself. Not necessarily
unreasonable, depending on work:benefit of the particular feature/fix.
3. Find some other people that will share the cost with me. Again,
not unreasonable but I think the OP's suggestion would make this a lot
easier. If it was widely adopted. But that was the question, wasn't
it?
Paul Brown
Birmingham, AL
> I would respectfully suggest that you look further into the reasons for
> the failure of Digium's implementation of the Open Source Model before
> you canvas the community with requests for funding.
>
> Regards
> Craig Lawrence
>
> Summary:
> Would you help fund different Open-Source Asterisk enhancements,
> bugfixes, or documentation if there was a way to collectively
> contribute money towards the effort without a profit margin
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