A dear friend, the CEO of fone.do, Mr. Moshe Meir had written a blog post on the fone.do blog. The title is: “Is there a future for Asterisk?

I have a different take on the thing. I think that Moshe is simply asking the wrong question. He should be asking “What is the role of Asterisk in your future?”.

I know Moshe personally, and I’m shocked by the short sighting of his question. Asterisk was born, initially as a PBX – it has evolved to much more than that. Last year, in my presentation, I showed a slide of a large elephant, with various blind people feeling it around – trying to ascertain what an elephant is. Asterisk is that elephant, it will be what you want it to be. You want it to be a PBX, so be it. You want it to be a Video gateway, so be it. You want it to be a services control point for your OTT application, so be it. You decide!

As technologists and visionaries, it is our job to look ahead into the future and think: “What is the next step? where will we be in 5 years from now, in 7 years from now?” – that is called visionary, pioneering, disrupting and most importantly, exceptional. You want to know what the future of Asterisk will be? look at what you need, that is where it will go. Was always the case, and will always be the case.

Yes, I use Kamailio, OpenSIPS, FreeSwitch and other tools. Yes, I’ve used OpenRTC, EasyRTC, Kurento and others. Yes, we still use them and YES – WE USE ASTERISK, and we will most probably keep using Asterisk for our needs – where it fits the best and assumes the task to the best of its ability. This is why every year we come to Astricon, this is why every year we join the DevCon, this is why every year we make it our business to keep track of whats going on in the core. Moshe, you are forgetting, we are not drivers, we are mechanics – we build and fix things. Tony Stark in Iron Man 3 says: “I’m a mechanic” later on the child replies “You’re a mechanic, fix it” – here’s my challenge to you – “FIX IT!” – make it better, make it stronger, make it into the thing you love and want.

One more thing Moshe, and this is something for you to think about – when you write a blog post, on a blog that has no way of allowing its readers to comment or participate in any form, you should not write opinion posts. Opinions are meant for people who can interact and respond.

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