Why Asterisk 13 is EXPERIMENTAL?

Hello,
I have
Current version:6.12.65-26
Asterisk (Ver. 11.16.0)
FreePBX 12.0.53

I try switch to Asterisk 13, but it EXPERIMENTAL

asterisk-version-switch

Pick the Asterisk Version you would like to change to.
Press 1 and the Enter key for Asterisk 1.8
Press 2 and the Enter key for Asterisk 11
Press 3 and the Enter key for Asterisk 13 EXPERIMENTAL
Press 9 and the Enter key to exit and not change your Asterisk Version

Because their are lots of issues that keep coming up with Asterisk 13 with all the fundamental changes in pjsip and other pieces of asterisk that were gutted and started over. It took Asterisk years and years to stabalize on chan_sip it will take years for pjsip to stabilize and find the gotchas.

That is a fair answer, but I have a follow-up question:

chan_pjsip solves many, many issues in our deployment. (As well as many others, I’m sure.) Being able to have multiple endpoints alone will remove thousands of lines from our extensions_additional.conf file, as well as resolve some hard limitations we’ve run up against using chan_sip. Specifically, our deployment requires multiple endpoints for extensions. I’ve achieved this in chan_sip by using followme, ring groups, and queues, but there are a number of instances I’ve run into where this complexity causes massive unpredictability as well as features that just plain don’t work. Lord knows, I’ve had more than my share of “gotchas” with Asterisk 11. :wink:

What are the practical implications of Asterisk 13 being considered EXPERIMENTAL? Is it considered suitable for deployment in production environments? I believe it’s “officially” regarded as STABLE, and while I understand that it doesn’t have a decade of regular use under its belt, it seems, at least in my testing, to be a very well thought-out update. I’m not one to take unnecessary risks and ride the bleeding edge of releases, but is the EXPERIMENTAL label being used more or less for indemnity, or are there legitimate concerns for relegating it to test environments?

I’m not trying to cast aspersions on any person or company here - I am devoted to FreePBX - but I would really like to upgrade our production environment, and I’d like to have something intelligent to say when by boss sidles up behind me and asks “Why are we using something marked as EXPERIMENTAL for our production phone system?” :angry:

Thanks for taking the time to answer, and thank you for your hard work on FreePBX.