[Mac-telephony-list] Asterisk/OpenPBX on Mac vs. Linux

[Benjamin Kowarsch via List]

On Dec 21, 2006, at 10:18 AM, Tom Rymes via List wrote:

> OpenPBX
> 1.) Not "stable" software

And what do you mean by "stable" ?

Do you mean a stable API which doesn't change all the time to the  
effect that stuff breaks?

Well, for the most part Asterisk exposes the guts of internal data  
structures and any kind of development involves poking around in  
those guts. That describes a large part of what Asterisk calls an  
API. Not surprisingly, the guts change and then the "API" changes  
with them. There are some weirdo people in the IT industry who  
advocate abstraction and data encapsulation so as to make changes to  
internal data structures not affect APIs, but such disturbed minds  
are not easily found amongst the people who make decisions about  
Asterisk.

As for OpenPBX.org, large parts of the changes being done or being  
planned are about introducing an hereto absent API as inherited from  
Asterisk. So, yes, it doesn't have a stable API, simply because it  
didn't inherit one to begin with. The difference is that OpenPBX.org  
is going to have abstraction layers and data encapsulation while  
Asterisk will probably continue to have none. In other words, both  
have no stable API at present, but the one you singled out is the one  
which has the best shot at fixing that problem.

Or do you perhaps mean stable as in reliable?

Asterisk is very much bleeding edge and with that comes a certain  
level of continuous instability. OpenPBX.org aims not to be bleeding  
edge. Development work over the last year has mostly been under the  
hood. For example, several inferior Digium re-inventions of the wheel  
have been replaced with proven off-the-shelf wheels and this process  
is ongoing. As a result, the superior wheels which have already made  
their way into OpenPBX.org have already made it a smoother ride even  
before the first public release.

Many people who have replaced Asterisk production systems with  
OpenPBX.org have reported that it is more reliable and many issues  
which troubled them before have disappeared. Often, the OpenPBX.org  
developers aren't even aware of these issues, either because they  
have been introduced to Asterisk after the fork, or because they  
disappeared from OpenPBX.org as a result of replacing those re- 
invented wheels.

Whatever your definition of "stable" may be, the chance is that the  
statement "not stable" applies at least as much to Asterisk as it  
would apply to OpenPBX.org. I suspect your perception is the single  
most contributing factor to making that statement.


> 2.) Not fully functional on Mac OS yet (The CLI does not work on  
> Mac OS)

This is a relatively minor bug and it will soon be fixed.


> 3.) Unicall not yet complete, so no PCI cards

It's not the Unicall part which is missing. It's the drivers.


rgds
benjk