[Sipwitch-devel] SIP Witch adopted for next release of Ubuntu (Lucid) and Fedora 13

[David Sugar]

Two weeks ago SIP Witch was proposed and adopted by the FSF as a means
to potentially address the problem of Skype remaining a close source
library using proprietary protocols and under the control of a provider
who could potentially perform backdoor control operations or redirect
user traffic by enabling people to create a direct bottom-up
participatory network using DNS alone and entirely under the control of
individual users.  This proposal, involving the use of SIP Witch as a
network enabler using entirely standard protocols along with a secure
(ZRTP) SIP softphone client, was taken to two distro's who were in the
process of designing their next distribution release.

In Ubuntu I had offered a proposal not just in terms of replacing Skype
with sipwitch as a middle layer to create participatory networks, but to
transform the entire free software desktop telephony user experience as
an essential enabler and transformer of desktop telephony itself. This
rather broader vision and plan has been accepted, with some specific
goals for the LTS release of Ubuntu GNU/Linux, to be delivered in April.
 Around the same time the Fedora Engineering Committee voted to have SIP
Witch participatory networking, as envisioned in the FSF goals to
replace Skype with free software and standard protocols, as a feature
for the next (13th) release of Fedora.

I naturally look forward to additional GNU/Linux distributions choosing
to support and endorse GNU SIP Witch in various essential roles
including furthering the goal of free and secure communication for
everyone, although I think that was an excellent start. From the
perspective of sipwitch, there are several specific tasks that will be
done to further simplify and automate it's usage.

The most interesting result of these plans I think will be that of
developing zero-config capabilities in sipwitch during the next few
months. This means there will no longer be need to construct xml config
files for user SIP accounts. Simply adding a user account to the
@sipusers group will become an easy and automated way to generate a
matching sip account in the next major release of SIP Witch. Similarly
user passwords will automatically be synchronized into sipwitch
authentication hashes (digests) using pam in much the same way samba
does. This means that the user's normal account credentials will also be
their SIP credentials, rather than having these handled separately.

As SIP becomes a mediating service on millions of Ubuntu and Fedora
GNU/Linux destkops next year, this also offers entirely new
opportunities to think about using SIP and telephony services in
general. As we approach the goal of zero user configuration, this makes
it easy for anyone to actually use, something that has not been possible
in most desktop VoIP scenarios in the past.  The longer-term goals,
especially in the plan now adopted by Ubuntu, is for SIP Witch to
essentially become used for VoIP in the desktop stack in a similar role
as gstreamer does for media, or pulseaudio does for sound.  This will
likely take shape as a specific sipwitch plugin, as that is the
preferred way to modify sipwitch behavior, and still enables other
sipwitch use cases such as a network softswitch for SIP intact as well.

dyfet.vcf
Description: Vcard