Page 13 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

Foreword

Once upon a time, there was a boy
...with a computer
...and a phone.
This simple beginning begat much trouble!
It wasn’t that long ago that telecommunications, both voice and data, as well as soft-
ware, were all proprietary products and services, controlled by one select club of
companies that created the technologies, and another select club of companies who
used the products to provide services. By the late 1990s, data telecommunications had
been opened by the expansion of the Internet. Prices plummeted. New and innovative
technologies, services, and companies emerged. Meanwhile, the work of free software
pioneers like Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and countless others was culminating
in the creation of a truly open software platform called Linux (or GNU/Linux). How-
ever, voice communications, ubiquitous as they were, remained proprietary. Why?
Perhaps it was because voice on the old public telephone network lacked the glamor
and promise of the shiny new World Wide Web. Or, perhaps it was because a telephone
just wasn’t as effective at supplying adult entertainment. Whatever the reason, one
thing was clear. Open source voice communications was about as widespread as open
source copy protection software.
Necessity (and in some cases simply being cheap) is truly the mother of invention. In
1999, having started Linux Support Services to offer free and commercial technical
support for Linux, I found myself in need (or at least in perceived need) of a phone
system to assist me in providing 24-hour technical support. The idea was that people
would be able to call in, enter their customer identity, and leave a message. The system
would in turn page a technician to respond to the customer’s request in short order.
Since I had started the company with about $4,000 of capital, I was in no position to
be able to afford a phone system of the sort that I needed to implement this scenario.
Having already been a Linux user since 1994, and having already gotten my feet wet in
open source software development by starting l2tpd, Gaim, and cheops, and in the
complete absence of anyone having explained the complexity of such a task, I decided
that I would simply make my own phone system using hardware borrowed from

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