Foreword
When we were thinking of who we could ask to write a foreword for the fourth edition of the book, lots of names were tossed around. We had already had Mark Spencer (author of Asterisk) write it for the first two editions of the book. Next, John Todd did a fantastic job for the third edition. After batting around several names (of which you will see below), we thought, “This is a book written by the community, how about we do a community foreword?” With that idea in mind, we picked several people whom we respect, and who have been using Asterisk as long as (if not longer than) ourselves. When we were thinking of people, we wanted to get several perspectives and loosely answer several questions about Asterisk. The questions we were looking at included:
How has Asterisk helped in communities?
What worldly endeavors has Asterisk contributed to?
Where has Asterisk been and where is it going?
Why is Asterisk being deployed and what needs does it solve?
These are all questions that most people who have used Asterisk for an extended period of time are either asked, or have asked themselves. After posing those questions to the following authors, they all came back with various viewpoints about the Asterisk software, and how it has changed the telecommunications industry and the lives of people. We hope you enjoy reading about their contributions as much as we did.
Matt Jordan (Engineering Manager, Digium)
When Leif asked me to write a foreword for the updated edition of Asterisk: The Definitive ...