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Open Source And Net Telephony
Gark writes: "There's an interesting article at Upside Today that talks about the Bayonne project, which has the potential to change the telecommunications industry the same way that Free Software has changed computing. It's interesting that the project got its start when a proprietary software developer was going out of business, and decided to GPL their source code, thereby creating new business opportunitites." The article talks a lot about Open Source and the Net, compared to the Telco industry and its history of proprietary systems. It's a good read.
Most of the older software companies should GPL their old source like what id did. I mean, wouldn't it be cool to rewrite your own versions of Warcraft? I like this company already. And old hardware comps. should gpl their schematics and all the relative specs, too!
hlag
From my experience with telco industry is alot like Win9x, the large base that it's on is pretty much proprietary, noone cares how it works (except for people that build stuff for it or have too much free time). However there is a very opensource top level interface that everyone and thier brother has tinkered with. It's been that way since the Carterfone decision and the breakup of AT&T and ma Bell (even though bells like SBC are buying other bells like Pacific Bell now). The only thing that really needs to be changed to change the whole infrastructure is the lowest levels.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
That article was not easy to read. For a while, I kept thinking, "Wait a minute.. this is about open source software... not open source telephony." I mean, the focus of the article was some ten-year-old abandonware made by a company that was going out of business. That sort of grudging "Fine, we're out of business, we'll open the damn thing" mentality is good for the Open Source movement, but it isn't exactly a triumph of ideology.
Anyway, I guess the article in question is more about "internet voice conferencing" than anything else - something that's been around for quite a while, but apparently with ugly time delays. I didn't actually read anything that claimed that this open-source conferencer solved the problem, but I guess the idea is that eventually, we'll solve the problem. And by "we", I don't mean "me", so don't bother asking me for it.
In conclusion, this is a Good Thing, but not exactly earth-shattering.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
.........They say every ending contains a new beginning. In the world of open source telephony, where revolutionary breakthroughs have been slow to come, it took the final act of an outgoing proprietary vendor to give the movement its much-needed jumpstart. .....
Its sad to know that these companies with so much potential doesnt realise the potential in Opensource until they are going out of business. If only they had designed and built it in the first place and released the specs for peer review by the open source community and standardising it, they would have been a success than having to shut down.
.....the telecom market remains a labyrinthine hive of black box technologies, a place where customers and value-added resellers (VARs) remain dependent on the proprietary hardware and software systems of a dominant telco or wireless company......
Just reiterating what I said above. But the sad part is they also made their money out of it and now that they have to shut down, only then they realise the potential of a GPL.
Rapid Nirvana
Can't people step back and realize that Open isn't always good? Would you write your novel Open Source? Would you make your washing machine Open Source? No, so why would you make your Telco solution Open Source?
As much as I'm a fan of the open development model, I sometimes think that people around here are just communists - they wish all products to be developed in an Open fashion, and that just ain't right (at least without a major rewrite of our governmental structure!)
A brief history of the telecom network:
In the late '70s a great change happened to the telecom systems of the world - the separation of voice and signaling networks. No longer was signaling (call setup, etc.) done over the voice trunks. Old phreaks may remember when the blue boxes stopped working. This was because of "out of band signaling".. the call setup and takedown, etc. was taken out of the voice lines. Having a separate circuit-switched network for signaling also allowed us to do things like 800 numbers, 911, etc.
Now, the standards for Signal Points (SP) on today's SS7 network are very rigorous. The US uses ANSI while most foreign countries use ITU. Both standards are very very rigid. SPs (depending on their flavor) are allowed somewhere between 3 seconds and 3 minutes of downtime a year. That's for the system itself, not the network links, which fail more often for various reasons. The system has to be there to reroute traffic when the links go down.
Keep in mind this is very oversimplified.
Now, the latest revelation in telecom is the SoftSwitch - a "Software Switch" basically.. These don't run on Windows NT, or *BSD, or anything you might run on a personal computer or internet server. A successful SoftSwitch demands a fast, tight, realtime OS, that can be fitted snugly with the hardware.
I don't think the open source model will work with telecom becasue this is not the kind of thing you work on at home in your spare time. This is not the kind of thing you can release to the community in alpha, and wait for them to lend a hand. This is not the kind of product that would benefit from having the source shipped with it. The customer doesn't have time or know-how to hack on the code and recompile if there's a problem, or the equipment to test it properly before putting it on the network.
Sorry.. Nice idea, but until corporate America is seriously restructured, it won't happen.
wish
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A lot of a CT application or product is in the rest of the software - switch functions, human interface, feature set. I suspect that this GPL'd package will need a fair amount of bashing at the interface level to get it into shape for platform portability, but it should have some real value.
If there isnt a "Cold call, scream FIRST POST!, hang up" module, it aint Open Source.
I just want to use my Linux box as an answering machine. Time to look into the voice modem stuff again...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The idea of copyright being of a limited term (originally 14 years plus an option for another 14 - recently perverted into life of the author plus 70 years at the behest of Disney) was that every creative effort would eventually enter into the public domain. And, "Public Domain" can be read as "Open SOurce" if you like.
The works of Shakespeare are in the public domain - i.e. you can publish them, put them on web sites, use them as the basis of new creative works, print them on tolet paper, whatever - and no one can stop you.
So, yeah...eventually everything (barring further evil efforts of the Mouse) will be in the public domain, thus "open source".
Arguably, the intention of the Framers of the US Constitution was to maximize the amount of material freely available to the public. A case could be made that if a creative copyrighted work has been abandoned by it's creator and if no further effort is going to be made to make it available to the public, then it should automatically revert to the public domain.
Copyright is a good thing, but I don't believe that it should be used to keep creative effort away from the public. Case in point: GO's Pen Point. This was the last real innovation in GUI interface (you may disagree, but check it out and really consider the implications of it's design before you judge). But still, long after Bill FUDded it to death with the idiotic "Pen for Windows" it's unavailable. If GO had placed it into the public domain, or it if had reverted to it by no longer being available, we would all benefit.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
True, but without that monopolistic entity the infrastructure that makes telephony and even the net possible just wouldn't be there. It's one thing to order up a point to point circuit from your local telco or one of the big three, but what would things be like if you had to run a cable from A to B instead.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
[ incredulous "hello, earth to Stary" look ]
That ... just hasn't been happening, though...
You can even buy, for example, RH CDs without any mote of support and -- get this -- people are still buying them. Lots of Free Software-oriented companies actually make some (or nearly all -- i.e. Cheapbytes) of their money from continuously selling software-on-media-with-no-support.
Hell, RH even puts RPMs and even ISO images up on their site so people can download and/or burn their own, and people STILL buy CDs from them.
People even buy DEBIAN CDs for crying out loud -- there's NEVER any support for those, and Debian's a distro where apt-get mostly removes the need for a local copy on CD anyway...
Apparently, it's suprisingly difficult to saturate the market for copies of a particular piece of software.
DNA just wants to be free...
Cisco is indeed burning up the back door with voice over IP. A lot of work has gone into that technology. It is far cheaper to send large amounts of data over IP than a phone. People don't want to have multiple wires. So on and so forth.
The needs of voice and network traffic are not exactly the same. (With data you care about perfect transmission of bursts of information, with voice you care about reliably holding a connection when you get it.) However it looks to me like the technology for data transmission is getting so much better than the technology for voice transmission that it is a question of time until the market says that we only need one of these...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
While I understand the sentiment that some feel sometimes things are being done "open" just for the sake of claiming to be open even when its felt not to be the appropriate thing to do (though IMHO there is no case to be made for an advantage to "closed" solutions in any major market, but I digress), I believe telephony has an exceptionally strong case specifically for "open" solutions and that the GPL is the best vehicle both to protect the freedom offered in open telephony solutions and to promote it commercially.
One respect that makes telephony unique is that most telephony solutions (such as small office PBX's, voice mail systems, IVR's, etc) are primarly delivered thru a VAR channel, and there are some 5000 indipendent telephony dealers in this country alone. These dealerships are often forced to supply customers proprietary products that they are only allowed to modify in the expressed manner that has been permitted by the manufacturer. While each mfg talks about "forming partnerships" with their reseller channel, manufacturers use various means to keep control of the reseller and the end user (such as requiring "exclusivity" to carry brand X product, disclaiming of warrenties, etc) and, in that they are actually quite removed from what the end user actually wants and desires, they often produce less than "clueful" products.
What the GPL would mean for this market is that the reseller would be free to adjust a given solution to meet real and actual customer needs, and that the means to do so can not be taken away from the reseller later on. In this sense, it means one has to form a "real" partnership with the reseller channel rather than marketing sound-bites.
The telephony reseller channel is one where solutions are fit to customer needs and the majority of the profit often comes from service agreements and support, rather than the sale of tangible goods. This sounds like a classic case of the "open source" service business model to me, and it's practiced every day by a 50 billion dollar industry.
An interesting question. Penpoint is currently locked up in limbo for exactly that reason. The creditors are going to want all their money back with interest if anyone wants to revive it, or at least a reasonable dollar value. But as nobody will give them their $75 million dollars back, they have nothing.
Perhaps the investors already got their money back in the form of a tax write-off? And if an effort like this is allowed as a write-off, the copyright would be voided and the work would be allowed to enter the public domain?
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
"open source software" for telecommunications isn't so much for the network, but for the end user on the desktop.
The existing telecommunications networks are defunct: the so called 'intelligent' network that employed SS7 and smart nation-wide routing systems is a technological legacy due to the increasing ubiquity of the Internet and the progress of technology in the guise of moore's law. It's only a manner of time before it all migrates to an IP based network, and even AT&T has acknowledged this by declining from buying anything other than IP based equipment - this is why Nortel, Lucent, Ericcson and the major provides of old-school equipment are forging into new markets.
Using the net for voice/media calls is still problematic because QoS and billing issues have yet to be sorted out. The mistake that many people make is to think that there will be an "internet telephone company" - there will not be, because the whole concept of "a telephone company" is defunct in light of the Internet. What there is, is a collection of bandwidth providers, and on top of that, there are all sorts of services, of which telephone is one.
What will happen is that internet QoS mechanisms will come into place, and you will be able to "buy" guaranteed information streams across the network, and on top of that, you can run your video/audio/multimedia one-to-one or group communications tool. That obviously assumes the availability of considerable bandwidth, and it will take a while before the networks are in place, but you can be sure that they are heading there.
While a lot of other software has become popularised through open source, no integrated telephony software has - I accept that there are various bits of software (desktop phone, internet videophones, etc), but there is no real movement or interest group in the way that there is for other software technologies and no real common understanding of what it means to make voice calls across the Internet - not enough people understand this concept yet. Even systems like IRC had a large interest community of developors that evolved the code. Where has that been happening for telephony ?
This is summary: the concept of a telephone company is dead, and so is the idea of SS7 and 'old school' switching technologies. The internet is rapidly replacing all of this as a common transport medium upon which voice calls will be just "one type of service". Although various internet telephone companies are around, there is no real unification or movement to develop an internet based phone/media software platform that is open, extensable and integrated on the desktop for the use of the masses. And the masses do not yet understand the concept, nor have an incentive make the change - there needs to be some kind of infrastructure in place (i.e. once many people start to use DSL services, then perhaps if voice/video phone services became available, people would make the voice/video call over DSL/internet rather than making a standard POTS call, and from then onwards, would just not go back to making POTS calls ever again).
Too many people still think that the internet is something at the end of their phone line, that do not yet realise that their phone line is the internet, and a voice call is just some service offered.
The sorts of concept video phones that have been thrown around are also in the wrong paradigm, they work on the idea of an 'enhanced telephone' - the whole idea of a telephone is dead, as is an enhanced one. What is alive, and always will be, is the idea of 'communication' - "call mom" is something people want to do irrespective of whether they use a phone or an internet multimedia service -- all the more better by using the latter and being able to see her face as well.
Through all of this, the biggest problem is the paradigm shift - people still thinking in old ways until a sort of critical mass and juncture hits them in the face, and then they see the new world, and by then, the old world is long on the way out.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net