Skype

[dagisr]

A default provider in Askozia for SKYPE!
One would need to enter skype username and password.
Maybe very difficult to fix.
But this would give us a free incoming number to the PBX using www.ring2skype.com

[Michael]

Digium has a pay-for channel driver which can connect to Skype.
 - http://www.digium.com/en/products/software/skypeforasterisk.php

To support that, we would have to have a firmware image which is compiled with glibc instead of uClibc (what we currently use for its compactness). Once that is complete, one could integrate natively with Skype.

[going_digital]

Hi

I am currently using Astlinux but your new linux based project looks interesting. The one thing I am looking for above all is the ability to buy and install the chan_skype module from Digium. The limiting factor in Astlinux is the use of uClibc that prevents that as Digium only provide a binary compiled against glibc.

I would really like to see an askozia image using glibc, do you think that will happen ?

The idea of trying to keep things as small as possible is probably not in itself the best primary goal to have. I would suggest that in order to make a really useful asterisk appliance the package needs to be kept small but not at the expense of functionality. This is the trap that Astlinux has fallen into, it is a less than ideal platform due to their obsession with size. Even the most basic embedded boards now have a onboard flash of at least half a gigabyte and people using CF cards on a mini-itx board or similar will be hard pressed to find a CF card less than 2GB. I think the memory footprint needs to be kept reasonably low due to the low RAM on some boards but the image size is not so important.

Astlinux for example does not include full versions of perl, therefore, it cannot load perl modules.  dahdi_genconf as a result does not function. That is just crazy as it makes configuring the system so much more difficult and this is a core part of dahdi not some add-on. I hope you guys don't make the same mistakes.

[Michael]

I would really like to see an askozia image using glibc, do you think that will happen ?

I know that will happen. It is planned for 2.2 but could be moved up to 2.1 if there is commercial interest and financing to bump it up the list.

When porting from FreeBSD to Linux a decision was made to base everything on the same C library to ease troubleshooting. This is now complete and a new image will be developed which is linked against glibc in a coming release.

All proprietary add-ons which I am aware of are linked against glibc. They are also usually resource hungry (due to their functionality, not the library used). It only makes sense for us to support these add-ons in the project.

Astlinux for example does not include full versions of perl, therefore, it cannot load perl modules.  dahdi_genconf as a result does not function. That is just crazy as it makes configuring the system so much more difficult and this is a core part of dahdi not some add-on. I hope you guys don't make the same mistakes.

We made the same decision but not mistake. There is not a Perl interpreter in AskoziaPBX but, by rewriting those configuration generators in PHP, we've met both goals.


Astlinux is an excellent project which many many people use. The people behind it are, however, not trying to build a business on top of it. We are building a business here. Remaining Open Source and community friendly is goal number one. Making something valuable and usable in a commercial environment comes right behind because it pays our bills. This is the same reason paid features get bumped up in priority. Those features are still Open Source but are prioritized to meet a commercial need for both parties.

[going_digital]

So far you project is sounding more interesting than Astlinux.

Once you have a gcc compiled version you should be able to become a reseller of the Digium modules, that would be another source of income for you.

Once you have a stable v2 I'll take a look at it myself and see if there is anything I can do to contribute.