[Serusers] Re: Fw: [Users] TM : retransmission timers

Andrei Pelinescu-Onciul andrei at iptel.org
Wed Nov 22 18:59:04 CET 2006


On Nov 22, 2006 at 12:39, Klaus Darilion <klaus.mailinglists at pernau.at> wrote:
[...]
> > I'm being told that some other personal affiliated with
> >the same company more or less copied-n-pasted TCP code from the allegibly
> >discontinued SER to OpenSER.
> 
> That's how open source works. I also copied lots of TLS extensions from 
> ser to openser, and even extended it. You can also copy my extensions 
> back to ser ... I would love to see it there :-)


I'm sure Jiri has no problem with copying code from ser to openser.
We will do the same with some openser modules and we already did with
 some fixes.
The problem here was that it was claimed that ser was dead but in the
same time new code commited in ser was added in openser (so the
 openser history writer was not very well intended).


Speaking of copying/porting ser between ser and openser I have a few
 requests:

1. If someone sends a fix for code taken from ser, which was not
modified in openser, please could you also bounce the message to the ser
maintainer of that piece of code? If you don't to whom, just send it to me
and I will make sure it reaches the right person.
I'm asking this because my favourite pass-time is not to scan openser
commitlogs for possible fixes to my code 
(e.g.:http://openser.cvs.sourceforge.net/openser/sip-server/fastlock.h?r1=1.2&r2=1.3)
and this will help me at a minimum effort for the openser developer
part. Of course I think this is true not only for me, but also for other
ser and openser developers and I (and I'm sure anybody else on the ser
team) will return the favour.

2. Please give proper credits for the code you port from ser.
I've saw several times things like: Foo sees something was fixed in ser
or a new small feature was added and sends an email to the openser list
(specifying that the change/patch comes form ser).
The openser developers take the change, but the commit message says
something like: fix for XyZ, credits go to Foo (ser is not mentioned at
all).
It would not only be polite, but it will also help us to filter more
easily through the openser fixes.



Comming back to the openser - ser performance / features discussion, I
think the important part here is how we can improve both sers
(and you should take the test results as a bug report and maybe ask
yourself how did this go through testing, even old sers were faster
 then 4000 cps). 
If you think only of the users, then a combination of ser & openser will
be the best version.  While we disagree (probably) in many respects, I
think there are at least a few clear advantages each version has.
For example openser has very impressive documentation (at this time 
ser is very far away from this point of view) and lots of new modules.
ser has also its share of new modules (though I think not so many) and a
better/improved "infrastructure"  (core, tm and lots of the "base"
modules - we are actively improving them). ser code tends to also be
more tested and stable (our release policies differ wildly).
I've tried looking at openser core & tm commits and I haven't seen any
significant changes (and this is not a flamewar attempt).
Now the question is why doesn't openser take the core, tm and a big
part of the modules from ser completely and concentrate then in adding
new modules (which you seem to do anyway)? Does it make sense to
re-invent the wheel ?
Everybody (me too) suffers at least a little from the not-invented-here
syndrome, but if you think of the users and at how much of your time it
will save, it will make a lot of sense, even if some compromises would
be necessary.
I think the advantages will far outweigh the problems. Just think about
it, we can concentrate each other on our favourite stuff and we can
benefit much more easily from each other's work.


Andrei




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