1.2. Massive Change Requires Flexible
Technology
The most successful key telephone system in the
world has a design limitation that has survived 15 years of users
begging for what appears to be a simple change: when you determine
the number of times your phone will ring before it forwards to
voicemail, you can choose from 2, 3, 4, 6, or 10 ring cycles. Have
you any idea how many times people ask for five rings? Yet the
manufacturers absolutely cannot get their heads around the idea
that this is a problem. That's the way it works, they say, and
users need to get over it.
That's just one examplethe industry is rife with
them.
Another example from the same system is that the
name you program on your set can only be seven characters in
length. Back in the late 1980s, when this particular system was
built, RAM was pretty dear, and storing those seven characters for
dozens of sets represented a huge hardware expense. So what's the
excuse today? None. Are there any plans to change it? Hardlythe
issue is not even officially acknowledged as a problem.
Now, it's all very well and good to pick on one
system, but the reality is that every PBX in existence suffers
shortcomings. No matter how fully featured it is, something will
always be left out, because even the most feature-rich PBX will
always fail to anticipate the creativity of the customer. A small
group of users will desire an odd little feature that the design
team either did not think of or could not justify the cost of
building, and, since the system is closed, the users will not be
able to build it themselves.
If the Internet had been thusly hampered by
regulation and commercial interests, it is doubtful that it would
have developed the wide acceptance it currently enjoys. The
openness of the Internet meant that anyone could afford to get
involved. So, everyone did. The tens of thousands of minds that
collaborated on the creation of the Internet delivered something
that no corporation ever could have.
As with many other open source projects, such as
Linux and the Internet, the explosion of Asterisk was fueled by the
dreams of folks who knew that there had to be something more than
what the industry was producing. The strength of the community is
that it is composed not of employees assigned to specific tasks,
but rather of folks from all sorts of industries, with all sorts of
experiences, and all sorts of ideas about what flexibility means,
and what openness means. These people knew that if one could take
the best parts of various PBXs and separate them into
interconnecting componentsakin to a boxful of LEGO bricksone could
begin to conceive of things that would not survive a traditional
corporate risk-analysis process. While no one can seriously claim
to have a complete picture of what this thing should look like,
there is no shortage of opinions and ideas.
Many people new to Asterisk see it as
unfinished. Perhaps these people can be likened to visitors to an
art studio, looking to obtain a signed, numbered print. They often
leave disappointed, because they discover that Asterisk is the
blank canvas, the tubes of paint, the unused brushes waiting.
Even at this early stage in its success,
Asterisk is nurtured by a greater number of artists than any other
PBX. Most manufacturers dedicate no more than a few developers to
any one product; Asterisk has scores. Most proprietary PBXs have a
worldwide support team comprised of a few dozen real experts;
Asterisk has hundreds.
The depth and breadth of expertise that
surrounds this product is unmatched in the telecom industry.
Asterisk enjoys the loving attention of old Telco guys who remember
when rotary dial mattered, enterprise telecom people who recall
when voicemail was the hottest new technology, and data
communications geeks and coders who helped build the Internet.
These people all share a common belief: that the telecommunications
industry needs a proper
revolution.
Asterisk is the catalyst.
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