Why Open Source?

The first thing people learn about Open Source Software (OSS) is that it gives the customer insight into the engineering that goes into a product by handing the customer the actual source code, a huge benefit that many software companies do not provide. As a direct result, it allows a very low-cost of entry, and collapses the inflated cost structures of competing proprietary products.

But beyond that, open source allows technology to quickly adapt to an ever-changing technology marketplace. Open Source Software has an incredibly fast initial development cycle, and it's transparency allows it to be quickly refined, so that any bugs can be quickly excised by anyone from an entire community of skilled developers all around the world, all of whom have a vested interest in the success of the development of the software product and the robust feature set of future releases.

A successful OSS technology like Asterisk enables a thriving ecosystem of businesses to create products based on the enabling OSS technology, where all players can benefit equally.

Furthermore, Digium marries the greatest advantages of both OSS and commercial software development through a dual-license model. While Asterisk's development cycle is clearly open source, released versions of the code are feature-frozen and formally regression-tested to create Asterisk Business Edition, from which the OSS version benefits because the refined code is returned to the development community. Because of the credibility and customer confidence the formal testing phase of Asterisk Business Edition adds to the product, Digium is therefore able to provide warranties and an added level of support to its commercial (open source-based) software.

An additional advantage of OSS is that it is market-driven. Community members develop the applications they need, rather than what someone in another company's marketing department tells them they need. Hence, it is flexible. Proprietary software locks a company into products from a single vendor, and often doesn't allow expansion of its feature set or interface to third party software or devices. By contrast, OSS allows for much more freedom. Since it's based on open standards and the code is visible to all, OSS can be easily modified to fit a company's needs. OSS can be integrated with other software products to quickly produce a system tailored to a specific need.