[clue-talk] BerkeleyTIP Great progress VOIP November - Dec 6 = Improve VOIP

[David L. Willson]

Nate:

My humble suggestion is this.  When you 'yawn' at what another guy is working on, for reasons that aren't relevant, you're being rude.  Don't be rude to John.  John is giving a lot of his time to his Free software group.  Unless you think there's something wrong with that, don't "pooh pooh" his attendance level, or his software choices, or his skill running the software, or anything.  Be constructive, not snide.

He's working on this thing.  You, apparently, are too tired to do so, or you see no reason, or whatever.

Maybe it's the way you put it.  Let me suggest the "constructive criticism" approach.  Maybe words like, "If you're not attached to your current VOIP solution, I'd like to suggest that you try "x".  I think you'll get more VOIP with less effort."  You know, phrasing that focuses on the potential benefit to the person being criticized.

Maybe that's what you meant, and I just listened poorly.  If so, I apologize.

--David

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nate Duehr" <nate at natetech.com>
To: "CLUE talk" <clue-talk at cluedenver.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 3, 2008 7:19:14 PM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain
Subject: Re: [clue-talk] BerkeleyTIP Great progress VOIP November - Dec 6 =	Improve VOIP

David L. Willson wrote:
>> We went from in September having no online attendees,
>> to in October having 1 person remote on IRC, to in
>> November having 7 people around the US all in a VOIP conference!  It was
>> _fantastic_!  I was very impressed.  
> 
> [...]
> 
> 7 ports for something new is cool, I guess.
> 
> It's somewhat, um... "Yawn" for those of us doing this commercially for 
> a long time, though...
> 
> Nate:
> 
> 1. You're being a jerk.

Didn't mean to be.  Just sharing an interest in "VoIP" systems and 
sending a link to a box I work on that does "really big VoIP".

I said it was a shameless plug, sheesh!

> 2. John is celebrating meeting attendance, not technical achievement.

Thought that it said "Improve VOIP" for the December 6th topic, so I 
guess I misread what his goals are for the next meeting.

Heck I got the impression that THIS meeting was spent screwing around 
with VoIP more than getting the agenda done, whatever it was supposed to 
be... so I pointed out that there are better (completely baked, done, 
working) Linux solutions for video and audio conferencing.

Why screw around with tools that are already working when you have a 
meeting to hold?

> 3. If he were celebrating technical achievement, it would be within the scope of Free software, not software overall, and your yawn/snipe would still be non sequitur.

We're allowed to celebrate Free software, but achievements outside of 
that are worthless on Linux?  I think I understand now.

(Saying that everything accomplished outside of Free Software is crap, 
isn't going to attract too many people to the group, nor is it true.  Is 
CLUE promoting Linux or Free Software?  I seem to recall quite a few 
closed-source software vendors at the ClueFest, back when that event 
happened many many years ago.  And yes, I hung around the Debian booth 
and brought an old iMac running Debian to let folks play with it.  Back 
then my goal was "hardware agnostic", now my more recent vision seems to 
be "OS agnostic".  Back then it was "pick the best OS that will run on 
ANY hardware platform and look/behave the same".  Today it's "pick the 
best applications that will run on any OS and use those".  Never once 
during this process did I care about the LICENSE of that software.  I 
think I convinced myself I did and played "fanboi" of RMS/Free for a 
little while, but it was quickly snuffed by needing to get real work done.)

I get into arguments with you, an otherwise nice guy, because I don't 
believe or follow the Free/RMS Cult, most of the time, anymore.  Why do 
you care what I believe?  We're both using Linux, and this is a Linux 
list, isn't it?  I never saw the "check your evil closed-source software 
ways at the door" warning on the CLUE website.

Use whatever works, I tell folks... want to conference on Linux?

There's both open and closed tools.   Some of the closed ones are pretty 
nice.

Try 'em out.

http://www.skype.com/download/skype/linux/
http://www.webex.com/

Hmm, found a couple new ones I haven't tried... works on all platforms 
that will run Flash.  (Uh oh, more evil closed stuff I guess.)

http://www.sightspeed.com
http://www.wengomeeting.com/

The leaders in "killer apps" continue to prove that the OS platform 
simply DOESN'T MATTER anymore.  It's irrelevant, other than if it has 
enough market share, you port to it.

The best apps now run on anything... that can keep enough users to be 
big enough to worry about.  Linux needs to figure out how to appeal to 
more people so it can garner those closed application vendors.  Wasn't 
that always the complaint that drivers are hard to hack, because vendors 
don't see Linux as all that big a deal?  Isn't the best way to "get 
there" to have applications that the other OS's have, so people can 
migrate and have their old tools ... and THEN learn there's alternatives?

Call me crazy... but I see it that way...

Sorry if my comments were somehow inappropriate.  I figured if I 
flat-out said, "Fire up Skype and get on with the meeting.  What's the 
big deal?"  So I decided to link to a nifty "big box" I work on instead, 
  that smokes even Asterisk, which is pretty interesting and good... but 
can't keep up with dedicated DSP hardware for conference applications. 
Asterisk wins any day in raw price tag, it doesn't win in performance or 
audio quality (lack of delay).

Sometimes you want to buy the Cessna 172, and not spend the next three 
years building an RV-4 in a hangar from scratch.  All depends on what 
you need to get done and how much money you have on hand, and what you 
need to get done on what timeline.

If they have time to mess with barely baked VoIP software, cool... I 
even said it was inherently cool.  You learn a lot about VoIP messing 
with that stuff.  I don't mind at all.  Been there.  Done that. 
Probably will again.

Just pointing out that VoIP isn't supposed to be "difficult" nowadays. 
That was about 10 years ago.  800# conferencing is available for FREE 
from multiple vendors, if you'll listen to a short advertisement, and 
larger calls are less than $0.01/minute, per line.  VoIP isn't even 
necessary, just pick up the telephone... to have a nationwide meeting 
these days, is CHEAP... CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP.   (Thanks to REALLY big 
closed-source boxes with such high densities that people can afford to 
almost give the service away.)

Nate
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