Monday, September 26, 2005

My problem with Asterisk

Well, thanks to the History channel, I have my answer about why Asterisk bothers me so much.

I was watching this show on Sunday morning (yes, before church, Mom), and they had a show on about a spy. As part of the show, they mentioned this German airplane that was a "fighter bomber specially modified for reconnaissance". That made my stomach twist up in a knot. The plane was ugly, was probably too slow to be a really good fighter, and couldn't carry enough weight to be a decent bomber, and where are they going to put all that reconnaissance equipment? And these guys are German! They should WAY know better than that. Maybe that was one of the times when all the good German engineers had fled or were bringing the place down from the inside.

And that's my basic issue with Asterisk. It is a project that aims to do everything. And, will someone tell me just how you optimize for everything? In the real world, you either have something that's strong in one area, and weak in the others, or just a very mediocre but rounded effort. Now, I understand that, next to the SER proxy, it's the only strong game in town. I've always been a PingTel fan, but anyone at the VON show would see that Asterisk is ruling the show floor these days.

Well, you know, history might not repeat itself, but it sure as hell rhymes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Large VON show floor presence does not equal sustainable long-term success. You of all people should remember this.... :-)

Pingtel / SIP Foundry is growing at a similar rate that Asterisk did; it's just a year+ behind. It has a stronger, single-purpose, SIP-aware code base. $18 million in VC investment didn't go for nothing here.

Instead of just bashing Asterisk, how about doing a careful analysis of the SIP Foundry technology?