Crossroads: Free or Commercial Asterisk?
March 18th, 2009 | Published in Asterisk, Digium, open source, voip | 10 Comments
Editors Note: Here’s an interesting piece by Tyler Merritt which I think should generate some good discussions amongst the OS-VoIP community. I personally believe that most Asterisk vendors wouldn’t be in this business if Asterisk wasn’t free, but what I think this article addresses well is the question of “how “free” is Asterisk really for the end user?”
I believe that Asterisk is at a crossroads and has been for some time. Asterisk stands on the Path of Life for applications and ponders a fork clearly visible: Free or Commercial? Champions of the Cause of Asterisk on either side of the path cheer for one of the two forks. Which choice will the application make? Do the creators, contributors, designers, and dreamers really have a say in the matter? Is everyone making noise for nothing?
I don’t know the answer to all of the questions above, but I have a strong inkling that Asterisk must inevitably choose the Commercial fork. There is no future in Free. I stopped most of you right there. With that one statement you stopped reading. Your mind rejected the ugliness of the letters making up the word “commercial”, and I lost you. Perhaps Asterisk is destined to lose you when the next startup telephony switching software with a “free” bumper sticker affixed to the rear makes an appearance on the web (FreeSwitch ?). Commercial means casualty of the Open Source movement – right? Why should it?
Let me define terms. We can’t very well have an intelligent discussion about a subject where neither side agrees on standard terminology. So here is where I lay it out. You don’t have to agree with the definitions below. But if you don’t agree, then we can’t talk about the subject within the same field of reference. I think the terminology is fairly unbiased, so the playing field is level, but spin of any sort renders the discussion meaningless.
Commercial: a product or service obtained by an individual or business from another individual or business for a fee.
Free: a product or service obtained by an individual or business from another individual or business for no fee.
Future: Google has a whole list of definitions (Define:Future ) and none of them apply. In this case, when I say ‘future’, I mean of all the evolutionary choices that exist for this application, the ‘future’ marks the choice (or string of choices) that lead to the most dominant possible iteration of Asterisk. In other words, if Asterisk is a baby gorilla right now – what are the best possible combination of future choices that help the baby gorilla become the dominant silver-back in the group of telephony gorillas? Application Evolutionary Choose Your Own Adventure.
When I write as freely as I am writing now, I hear questions in my head in response to blanket statements I make. I say, “There is no future in Free” and I reply to myself, “Asterisk is an Open Source application – it can’t be closed now that it’s GPL, so what do you mean ‘there is no future in free?!’” I mean, simply, that Asterisk doesn’t scale in the long-run without commercial implementations. Asterisk isn’t Linux. Asterisk doesn’t have the same user-base as Linux. Linux was a blip on the technology radar all through the late 90s and still hasn’t gained as much traction as Linus might like. But Linux has a cult. A cult of devotees with zombie-thirst for ‘haters’. I’m actually one of them. Asterisk, by comparison, has a cult of devoted ‘integrators’ who LOVE the free ‘engine’ because they can build things on top of it and prof$t. No one loves this application enough to build it up and improve the foundations for free.
Sure, there is a community of developers who fork code back into the main Asterisk tree, and yes they have contributed modules and features and functions and we thank them for it. But I call shenanigans on any of those individuals who did it purely for the unrequited love they feel for an Open Source telephony switch. They do it to save their business money, or to make money implementing a cheap phone system for a non-technical customer. Or they do it to sell hardware.
Who is Anti-Free-Fork-Cheerleader-Number-One? Digium. Digium (Mark) did not write Asterisk out of benevolence and a desire to “give back” to the world and take away the wicked Crown of PBX from the Goliaths of telephony. Mark Spencer didn’t have enough money for a PBX, so he created one. It’s in his wikipedia article “Spencer did not have enough money to buy a PBX (private branch exchange) for his company so he decided to write Asterisk and later founded Digium.” Later founded Digium. He created an Open Source application, and later found a way to prof$t from it – by selling Digium TDM Cards that work really well with Asterisk!
So if we accept that Mark Spencer, a good guy, a great guy, is not Robin Hood, then we have a point in favor of the Commercial Fork.
Let’s look at other evidence that Asterisk is heading down Commercial Lane imminently:
- Google “asterisk” (I did it for you )
- What do you see as the first two pages?
- http://www.asterisk.org/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk (this is actually the 3rd link, but the second is another page on asterisk.org so it doesn’t count)
- So far, so good – Asterisk appears to be associated with URLs in the ‘ORG’ space – which isn’t for companies pushing products and services.
- How about the next links through to the end of the page?
- Asterisk.com!!! <– Commercial!
- Blogs about Asterisk – telling people to get involved or telling people how to use it. And those blogs run Ad Sense (or their own ads); hence, they make money.
- Books about Asterisk – books cost money.
- Companies offering to sell you an Asterisk-based system (for money)
- Some unassociated “Asterisk” sites that managed to make it onto the front page of Google Search and have nothing to do with telephony.
Two links for Free Asterisk – the rest for prof$t.
How about looking at the right-hand side (where all the ads that we tune-out live)?
For me it reads: Fonality.com, IntuitiveVoice.com,VoIPSupply.com, 3CX.com, thevoipconnection.com, Dell.com, vnowinc.com, freshairstudios.co.uk (offering voice prompt professional services – for Asterisk!)
Sure looks like a lot of businesses are finding creative ways to prof$t from Asterisk!
Ok so you still may be holding a grudge from Paragraph #2 – you might never be able to find it in your heart to forgive my slight. However, I have a point – Asterisk can only continue to exist on the Commercial Path. There isn’t an end-user use for this application. This is a telephone system (sans the system until you add hardware). Asterisk is a business tool. Businesses have a single reason to exist: prof$t. And they should. No business should exist for altruistic purposes. If you think otherwise, you’re a teenager struggling against the angst of learning to live with “the man” – or you’re crazy.
Look at the economy. People are losing the basic ability to feed their families left and right. Asterisk is a cost-savings solution, it’s a maintenance-contract savings solution, it’s a “this never should have been so complicated in the first place” solution (i.e. time). Asterisk is as much about money as the dollar bill. It’s either making dollars for someone, or helping someone use fewer dollars and maintain a tool they need to survive.
And it’s good. It is righteous that this application generate income for all parties. It is ok that companies have taken the product, built some service or function on top, packaged and sold it off to some other company that didn’t have the time/experience/expertise/money to get the same functionality from Avaya for a lot more money. Commercial is a blessing.
Without Commercial we lose most of the Open-Source world. If there wasn’t demand for Support and Professional Services – there wouldn’t be a Ubuntu. Sure Linux is free – but I remember the first time I had to install something – I didn’t even know the right words to google in order to find the “make” command (application – call it what you want). Linux walks the Commercial Path. Oh yes it does. And if there is even a ghostly resonance of Linux walking the Path of Free, it’s too ethereal even for my imagination to detect.
Asterisk isn’t a commercial product. I haven’t said it was, and I hope you didn’t get that impression. This part goes back to the messy work of defining our terms. Commercial doesn’t mean product in this article. We both know Asterisk can’t be closed down – that’s not how the GPL works. I posture that the only future (again, please re-read my definition of future) for Asterisk is on the Commercial Path.
Some of you agree with me. You may be wondering what’s the point of the whole article if you knew from the start that companies are prof$ting from Asterisk already? Reputation. The Open-Source community harbors within its ranks some of the most aggressive, stubborn, quack-defenders of any group or association online or off. People who rant and rage in forums and on message boards about the pure evil of companies who dare to take an application created in the beautiful spirit of ‘free’ and defile it with commercial shackles… don’t get it.
Without us – Asterisk would cease to be.
By Tyler Merritt
March 19th, 2009at 7:59 am(#)
Hi
I agree Asterisk, and to be honest Asterisk always has been a commercial product.
Too often people assume opensource means FREE, It doesnt it means the source is free and you are also free to change it.
That aside to deploy Asterisk you need skills, Now at home you could do this yourself, But in the Office, Yes if you work in the IT dept you could deploy it. But not for FREE as every minute you spend on it is a minute of salary that you employer has to spend. So this is not free. Then finaly you can employ a company to do it for you and provide support for you. Again obviously this isnt free. and It cant be the companies (Me for example) have to spend time and money on R&D, Test equipment (have you looked at the price of an ISDN simulator?) etc.
No Asterisk will become I guess more comercial as time goes on and I for one have no issues with this.
Ian
March 24th, 2009at 7:44 am(#)
2 points:
* Yes, the book costs money, but the authors didn’t do it to get rich; we did it mostly to help the community. The book, (Asterisk: The Future of Telephony) is available under the creative commons license (free!). The costs are mostly involved in the production of the book, and for people who happen to want to support the effort of people who write documentation. Believe me, we’re not drinking Corona’s on the beach in the Caribbean living the high life :)
* Asterisk.com has nothing to do with the Asterisk PBX :)
I mean, I see the point of your article, but this isn’t just an Asterisk issue; this is an issue with all software. I’m sure the guys over at The Gimp don’t do this “just for fun”, or the guys at PostgreSQL, or any other open source project that has any sort of traction that isn’t simply a hobby project for a single author.
We should be touting the fact that Asterisk, which has been released for free the community (no cost to get *involved*), allows people to make a real living off of it without even *requiring* you to contribute anything back.
Because of Asterisk, I’ve found myself a career I really love, and have been able to do it full time, supporting myself, for the last 6 years running my own company. This is the truly wonderful thing about Open Source.
I could have made a career working with Nortel as well, but power would have been lacking, and the costs associated with getting involved with it astronomical in relation to the costs involved with Asterisk. I was able to start contributing almost immediately after working with it full time for 2 months while looking for a co-op job during college. That experience led to a rewarding, and sustainable career.
So the commercial successes built around Asterisk are a miracle; not something to be given a negative connotation.
September 3rd, 2009at 2:12 pm(#)
Hi Tyler,
Most Free-Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) is commercial. It’s made for, or mostly used in, commerce. Read David Wheeler’s excellent essay: http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/commercial-floss.html
Commercial and Free are not opposing ideas, so your crossroads thesis is a false dichotomy. The only way to conjure this imaginary crossroads is to strictly define “commercial” solely as for-fee software and “free” solely as no-fee (gratis) software. This narrow manipulation of language overlooks the real power behind open source, which is the freedom (libre) to share ideas in the form of software. That freedom allows commerce too, but ensures that the code remains open and facilitates its own improvement regardless of use.
I think the word you’re looking for is “proprietary.” Proprietary — not commercial — is the opposite of Free-Libre Open Source Software. Proprietary usually means “closed source” as well, but sometimes proprietary software vendors make source code available under a license that prohibits the freedoms associated with FLOSS. This is the very reason many Open Source advocates choose to use the more-specific term FLOSS: it nails down the meanings of Open and Free.
As you acknowledged, Asterisk was created to satisfy a commercial need, yet it has always been free (gratis and libre). So where’s this crossroads? It doesn’t exist. You rely on characterizing commercial activities as being opposed to free in order to set the stage for your suggestion that Asterisk is moving to be less free and more commercial. The truth is that Asterisk has always been both fully free and fully commercial.
Sadly, your conclusion is exactly backwards. Asterisk was created out of commercial need, but now has enough users, contributors, and advocates to sustain itself without relying on any one company. In the unlikely event Asterisk’s creator-sponsor Digium were to fail, Asterisk would quickly be picked up by one of the many organizations that have built its house on this great platform. So the final claim that “without [profit-seeking companies] Asterisk would cease to be” is backward, at least in the case of your employer and mine. Without Asterisk, our companies would cease to be.
We at Digium are challenged daily by the threat of irrelevance, which drives us to great lengths to build community and move forward with the best ideas. Digium is committed to fostering a healthy community because the long-term success of Asterisk is essential to the long-term success of the company. We strive to offer compelling products and services that equip and enable Asterisk users worldwide.
And yes, the vibrant community of developers that surrounds Asterisk have varied motivations — for hire, for fun, for education, for business need — but that diversity reflects the resilience of the community, which is good. Some developers choose to align with the community and contribute code, while others are free to carry the code in another direction independently under the GNU Public License. We’ve seen plenty of independent forks of Asterisk struggle and fall into disuse when separated from this community. That’s the beauty of FLOSS: it allows the best ideas to win out in terms of code regardless of commerce.
The encouraging trend we see is that more and more businesses of all sizes are discovering the power of Asterisk. This despite — perhaps because of — the horrible economy we’ve experienced recently. Some organizations are buying proprietary systems that leverage Asterisk, some download Asterisk without paying a dime. Some buy training and support for Asterisk, which I’m thrilled to provide. In all these ways, Asterisk is growing quickly, into more and more businesses, which we at Digium think is a very good thing indeed.
rm
–
Rod Montgomery
Digium, Inc. | Director of Services
October 1st, 2009at 9:56 am(#)
“Without us – Asterisk would cease to be.”
An interesting statement coming from someone who works for Fonality
June 10th, 2010at 12:50 pm(#)
The telephone system we are using today still uses the legacy Tip and Ring -48 Volts line which is susceptible to noise.,.`
August 1st, 2010at 11:54 pm(#)
digital telephone systems today presents a great improvement overt the analog phone systems we used severa decades ago.;~
September 29th, 2010at 2:02 am(#)
modern day telephone systems are quite reliable and offers more services;~;
October 25th, 2010at 3:49 am(#)
the great thing about the modern telephone system are those value added services like Digital Subscriber Lines which offer high;.~
July 6th, 2011at 12:43 am(#)
telephone systems today are of course very complex and very efficient compared to the plain old telephone system that we used in the old days..
January 5th, 2012at 2:25 am(#)
Many thanks – I ought say, impressed with your site. I will twit this to my followers.