Any plan to fork OpenBTS and/or merge with Osmocom code?

This is merely a historical archive of years 2008-2021, before the migration to mailman3.

A maintained and still updated list archive can be found at https://lists.osmocom.org/hyperkitty/list/OpenBSC@lists.osmocom.org/.

Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) lists at infosecurity.ch
Sat Apr 9 06:37:20 UTC 2011


Hi all,

this email don't want to be a provocative email but just an opinion
related to the creation of value for GSM TLC stack into the opensource
environment.

As we know currently there are several different projects growing into
the GSM (then tetra and in future 3G?) opensource ecosystem.

The first "pratical" base has been OpenBTS as a simplified GSM um
interface for VoIP.

The second major implementations was around the osmocom project that
build-up a complete and well designed GSM stack with all the modular
interfaces and protocols for communications between BTS and BSC, with
MSC, HLR, GGSN, SGSN and major GSM network components.

Additionally, if i understood correctly osmocom is much more advanced
with broad scope and better design than OpenBTS.

It seems to me that OpenBTS it's almost stalled due to the "commercial
fork" of the OpenSource project and only fairwaves is contributing to
the opensource branch.

I personally really dislike the "Commercial fork" approach where the
community is used only in the early phase of the project to improve it
and from a certain point the community doesn't get almost any added value.
I like much more the dual-licensed approach like AGPL/Commercial (like
http://pjsip.org) where all the value of the code is publicly released.

However, my post was related to a question:

- How complex would be, leveraging existing public OpenBTS code, to
integrate into the Osmocom project?

I mean, having a sort of lightweight BTS component speaking A-Bis over
IP to OpenBSC like the cheap nano ip.access BTS does.

For what i read now Osmocom have 2 software BTS (Osmo-BTS and Soft-BTS),
communicating with the A-BIS over IP interface to OpenBSC:
http://lists.gnumonks.org/pipermail/openbsc/2011-March/002529.html
http://lists.gnumonks.org/pipermail/openbsc/2010-April/001508.html

I've read that only a lot of time ago (2009) there was a discussion
about OpenBTS to OpenBSC integration:
http://lists.gnumonks.org/pipermail/openbsc/2009-October/000955.html

At the current stage of development (2011), with Osmocom finally getting
a Software-BTS part communicating to the Software-BSC side, how really
complex it would be to integrate the GSM-um related part of OpenBTS into
the project?

With that approach the 'GSM-um' interface would be a very simplified
module of the overall system and osmocom would completely replace
OpenBTS all-in-one project.

Am i right?

-naif

p.s. Sorry for the cross-posting, i just wanted to explain the idea and
get the communities feedbacks to understand 'at which point' we are in
order to think 'what would be required to be done' to achieve that goal.




More information about the OpenBSC mailing list