Asterisk (software)

Asterisk
Developer(s)	Digium
Initial release	September 23, 2004
Written in	C
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Telephony software
License(s)	GNU General Public License
Website	www.asterisk.org

Asterisk is a free open-source software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange (PBX). Like any PBX, it allows attached telephones to make calls to one another and to connect to other telephone services including the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services. Its name comes from the asterisk symbol, “*”. Asterisk is released under a dual license model, using the GNU General Public License (GPL) as a free software license and a proprietary software license to permit licensees to distribute proprietary, unpublished system components.

Originally designed for Linux, Asterisk also runs on a variety of different operating systems including NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris. A port to Microsoft Windows exists as AsteriskWin32.^[2] Asterisk is especially small enough to run in an embedded environment like customer-premises equipment-hardware running OpenWrt.^[3]

Product history

Asterisk was created in 1999 by Mark Spencer of Digium. A public version 1.0 of Asterisk was released by Spencer while at Astericon on September 23, 2004.^[1] Additional releases were:

1.2 - Released on 15 November 2005^[4]
1.4 - Released on 26 December 2006^[5]
1.6 - Released on 2 October 2008^[6]
1.8 - Released on 21 October 2010^[7]
10.0 - Released on 15 December 2011^[8]

Features

Major features of Asterisk include^[9]:

drivers for various VoIP protocols
drivers for PSTN interface cards and devices
call recording and monitoring
routing and call handling for incoming calls
outbound call generation and routing
media management functions
call detail recording
transcoding support
protocol conversion support
database integration
Web services integration
LDAP integration
single and multi-party call bridging
integrated "Dialplan" scripting language
external call management in any programming or scripting language
event notification and CTI integration
"text-to-speech" support
speech recognition

Hardware/software requirements

Videos, screenshots, and other media

Screenshots for Omeka can be found on Meedan's Flickr page.

Numerous videos of Omeka in action can also be found on their website.

Access the online demo here.

Entities using Omeca

Examples of entities using Omeka include:

Alexandria Archive Institute, BJU Press, Center for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Chicago History Museum, European Science Foundation, Farmers Museum, George Mason University Libraries, George Washington University Libraries, Hawaiian Historical Society, MBL Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, New York Public Library, Oregon State University Libraries, Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Smithsonian Institution, Trinity College Dublin

A full directory of Omeka users can be found at the Omeka website.