(Filed by UC Celeb Talk - 1 Apr 2017.)
BERLIN (Tegel), GERMANY--In the now-infamous breakdown episode on the
VIP tarmac at Berlin's Tegel Airport, Alex Balashov shocked the IP
telecoms celebrity world last month.
Shielding his eyes from the punishingly bright daylight of an overcast
day in northern Germany, Balashov climbed out of his Gulfstream G650
jet, clutching a half-finished bottle of Woodford Reserve, and announced
his sudden retirement from the "fast life" of open-source SIP consulting
to a waiting gathering of techn business reporters.
"I'm not with this 'live fast, die young' VoIP s*** anymore," he
reportedly shouted, before collapsing and vomiting profusely on the red
carpet.
UC Celeb Talk's own Benjamin Brant sat down with Balashov in an
exclusive interview to learn more about what happened, even as the
telecoms industry continues to digest the shock meltdown.
--
BRANT: Everyone's dying to know, what was going through you head at that
moment?
BALASHOV: Funny how you mention dying. I want to live to see 35, man. I
can't handle the SIP biz anymore.
BRANT: What do you mean? You seemed to have all the makings of an
open-source SIP superstar.
BALASHOV: I can't keep up with the drinks anymore, the three day-long
parties, the paparazzi, always watchin' my back at ClueCon...
BRANT: When'd you realise it might be time to call it?
BALASHOV: I'll tell you when. It was Kamailio World '16. Man, those
vodka + Club Mate drinks they pour down at Fokus are something else.
They'll really get you thinking about things.
BRANT: So you had a cocktail and thought better of your entire life as a
SIP celebrity? The fans, the adulation, the glory?
BALASHOV: When you wake up at 3 PM at the Park Inn on Alexanderplatz
with a $31,000 room service bill on your AMEX, a goat wandering around,
and reporters in your face, you tell me with a straight face you're not
gonna take stock of your life and make some changes.
BRANT: That really happened?
BALASHOV: That's what I'm trying to tell you! That's Kamailio World,
dude. That's the SIP software engineering culture. You wanna ITSP and
WebRTC? You're gonna have to bro down!
BRANT: Surely not everywhere. What about the IETF?
BALASHOV: Those guys drink more than ANYONE. Have you seen the SIP
Outbound RFC?
BRANT: That's the work-product of an alcohol-fuelled creative orgy?
BALASHOV: It's the work product of something-something. I don't know if
I'm allowed to identify the uh, substance in question.
BRANT: How are you going to live without the private jet? If I had a G6,
I wouldn't just turn over the keys.
BALASHOV: Yeah, I mean, open-source VoIP consulting has its upsides.
It's a fine way to make a living. But it's just not worth it. Besides,
hourly operating costs are through the roof.
BRANT: But you were an icon, and quite a ladies' man too! How do you
walk away from that?
BALASHOV: Look man, of course women are gonna mob you when you're a SIP
consulting star. That's just part of the open-source tech life in
general.
But it's fake, man. They don't love you. They don't want to know who you
are inside. They just want you 'cause you know all about the SIP
transaction state machine, loose vs. strict routing, cross-compiling
Kamailio. They just got a crush on you 'cause you know presence and
parallel forking race conditions. I want something real.
BRANT: But that's part of the social bargain of being an open-source SIP
celebrity. Didn't you once boast of having uh, lady friends, "in
different geographic and non-geographic operator codes"?
BALASHOV: Yeah, and that's cool, but I want to come home to a woman who
loves me for me, not Mr. 3...
... 02, Moved Temporarily, but not happy necessarily. Feel me?
BRANT: What happened at ClueCon?
BALASHOV: You talking about the bullets Acme Packet ventilated me with?
BRANT: Five of them, as I heard.
BALASHOV: Well I'm still standin'. Took those shots and smiled.
BRANT: I know you guys have a kind of omertà about this stuff, but I've
got to ask: why?
BALASHOV: I ain't worried, kids growing up in today's world need to
learn the truth.
They act like I was dealing transcoding licences on their block. O.G. 729.
BRANT: But that wasn't what gave you a wake-up call that the SIP game is
sharper than a razor blade?
BALASHOV: Hell no, it wasn't their block. That fake-ass east coast
channel partner crew can cash me outside howboudah?
BRANT: How exclusive is Kamailio World?
BALASHOV: It's one of the most exclusive clubs I've ever hit up. Lines
wrapping around blocks. And the bouncers. Damn.
BRANT: The bouncers?
BALASHOV: Those dudes are harsh.
BRANT: On a scale of 1 to Berghain, how bad is it?
BALASHOV: All I know is, one time some squirrely guy in the audience
asked a moderately new-blood question like, "If a Record-Route header
has been added by an intermediate proxy, is it proper of a SIP User
Agent to populate the Request URI of subsequent in-dialog requests with
the Record-Route URI, or should it be the remote Contact?"
Half the room got up like it was ready to curb-stomp that little face.
Guy didn't know what he got himself into--a room full of elites.
BRANT: So what happened?
BALASHOV: Someone was like, "Bounce this fool! He don't know how to
act."
So these three muscular Kaiser Wilhelm-looking dudes--moustaches and
all--in sunglasses roll up and drag this guy through the Atrium, out the
doors and dump him straight out onto Anna-Louisa-Karsch-Straße.
BRANT: Damn. Ejected out of the saloon.
BALASHOV: Yo, that dude was dismissed from the premises.
BRANT: So what do you see in your future post-SIP life?
BALASHOV: I'm thinking about starting a bakery. A friend threw it out
there as a way to kind of atone for all this and get straight with
Jesus. Gonna bake really big cookies. You know, huge ones, like a small
pizzas? But recognise--they're actually cookies.
BRANT: Got any advice for those who bright young upstarts who haven't
turned over a new leaf and thrown in the towel yet?
BALASHOV: Come on down to Kamailio World #5, May 8-10 2017 in Berlin.
You'll see your life in a new way.
Registration and more information online at
https://www.kamailioworld.com/k05/
Dear Kamailians!
We got news for you! The Kamailio 6.0 architecture is finalised! It's something we've been working on for a long time in the project team and you've already seen part of it in the recent Kamailio 5 release - the KEMI interface for LUA.
We've realised that we have too many modules, especially all those IMS* modules. And the core is getting slimmer and slimmer. This is what we're going to do:
* All RPC, EVENTAPI,AUTH, JSON, TM, HTTP_CLIENT and TLS modules will be integrated back into the core.
* The EVENT API will be the core API for external modules
* The rest of the functionality in the modules will have to be rewritten in LUA and maintained as separate GITHUB projects outside of the core
After successfully integrating LUA into the heart of Kamailio and exposing the Kamailio API we have decided to make life more simple for the core maintainers. Maintaining well over 100 modules took too much time, and who cares about some of the stuff? Billing, least cost routing and all the other crazy stuff in modules are going away anyhow as all services will be free. Calls really wants to be free. And presence is no longer needed, we'll just tap into the mobile phones from the core to know where everyone is.
The removal of the modules will take place during the month of April 2017 and a new core will raise like a Fenix from the ashes, a much larger, monolithic and complex core with new functionality that will take Kamailio to new areas, like a message bus for games, an API server for mobile yoga apps and a control plane for embedded IoT devices. "Kamailio everywhere" is the new slogan for the Kamailio project.
- "We will all remember April 1st 2017 as a new start of the project" says Olle-Carsten Mierla, the new elected project leader. "From now on, Kamailio aims to be a standard part of every operating system distribution, defining the new core of the Internet.”
We hope all of you join us in this effort and refrain from reporting any bugs or other disturbing issues while we rebuild the new Kamailio.
/O
Brilliant! Bravo! Bravo! Brovo!
Gonna miss you Bro! Get in this neck of the woods, got some dope a$$ hooch and BBQ waitin!
Peace out!
JR Richardson
Engineering for the Masses
Chasing the Azeotrope
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2017 01:02:58 -0400
From: Alex Balashov <abalashov(a)evaristesys.com>
To: sr-users(a)lists.sip-router.org
Subject: [SR-Users] Exclusive: Quitting the fast life of open-source SIP
BRANT: But you were an icon, and quite a ladies' man too! How do you walk away from that?
BALASHOV: Look man, of course women are gonna mob you when you're a SIP consulting star. That's just part of the open-source tech life in general.
But it's fake, man. They don't love you. They don't want to know who you are inside. They just want you 'cause you know all about the SIP transaction state machine, loose vs. strict routing, cross-compiling Kamailio. They just got a crush on you 'cause you know presence and parallel forking race conditions. I want something real.
BRANT: But that's part of the social bargain of being an open-source SIP celebrity. Didn't you once boast of having uh, lady friends, "in different geographic and non-geographic operator codes"?
BALASHOV: Yeah, and that's cool, but I want to come home to a woman who loves me for me, not Mr. 3...
... 02, Moved Temporarily, but not happy necessarily. Feel me?