Open Source Development Challenges Kevin P. Fleming Director of Software Technologies Digium, Inc.

Ground Rules A thorough understanding of all protocols and services being used is mandatory; FOSS products tend to expose the complete details of the system, rather than 'packaging' it for the user FOSS telephony products tend to be 'toolkits' or 'platforms', which can be used in many ways but don't come preconfigured to act in any particular way Using FOSS products in your telephony network will be challenging, rewarding, fun and frustrating all at the same time!

Project Management FOSS projects run on 'Internet time' Bugs are usually fixed quickly, unless obscure Features are added when someone feels like coding/testing them Many projects have commercial enterprises involved who can develop and add code for a fee Code (especially development code) can change radically in a short time period, making developing add- on products a challenge

Lifecycle FOSS projects have widely varying release cycles Backwards compatibility is not always preserved Documentation lags code releases (sometimes by many months)‏ Major new features that you contribute may not appear in an actual release for an extended period Bug fixes (especially security issues) are frequently the driving force for minor releases

Licensing Concerns Most FOSS projects use GNU General Public License version 2 (or similar)‏ Contributors retain copyright to their code Code cannot be used with or linked to non-GPL code without exceptions being granted Code cannot be incorporated into commercial product without complying with GPL or obtaining alternative license

Support Google is your best friend! Mailing lists, IRC channels, web sites/wikis Paid support available for many projects Consultants specialize in specific areas and can provide a great deal of configuration/development assistance Urgent support requests will fall on deaf ears in most cases... using FOSS projects means you need to be very self-sufficient