AskoziaPBX is a

closed source Proprietary software is software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modi ...

telephone system (or " PBX")

firmware In computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, h ...

. It is a fork of the

m0n0wall m0n0wall was an embedded firewall (networking), firewall distribution of FreeBSD, one of the Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD operating system descendants. It provided a small image which could be put on flash memory, Compact Flash cards as w ...

project and uses the

Asterisk The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

private branch exchange (PBX) software to realize all telephony functions. Prior to version 2.1, AskoziaPBX was released under a restricted BSD license. It permitted all forms of open source modification and distribution but required licensing if AskoziaPBX is to be sold on commercial products.Site Forum
"AskoziaPBX License Addendum Notification"
, ''Site Forums'' (forum post), 29 April 2010. Retrieved on 2010-07-28.Site Documentatio
"AskoziaPBX License"
, ''Site Documentation'' (license), 29 April 2010. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. Since version 2.1, it has been released under commercial license only. Askozia also provides a "diet" version for testing. It has the full feature set, but is limited to two simultaneous calls. Originally based on

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

, AskoziaPBX was modified to run on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

creating a new Linux distribution for this purpose. Running on Linux it has also been expanded to run on

Blackfin Blackfin is a family of 16-/32-bit microprocessors developed, manufactured and marketed by Analog Devices. The processors have built-in, fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) functionality performed by 16-bit multiply–accumulates (MA ...

and

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

CPU architectures in addition to the original

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

History

AskoziaPBX was started as a proof-of-concept project by Michael Iedema at the Ostfalia - School of Applied Sciences in

Wolfenbüttel Wolfenbüttel (; ) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District Wolfenbüttel (; ) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel (district), Wolfenbüttel Distri ...

Germany in January 2007.Open Source Meets Business Presentatio
"Compact Open Source SoftPBX für VoIP-Lösungen in kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen"
''Open Source Meets Business'' (conference presentation), Nuremberg Germany, 23 January 2008. Retrieved on 2010-07-28.AsteriskTag Presentatio
"AskoziaPBX"
, ''AsteriskTag'' (conference presentation), Berlin Germany, 27 May 2008. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. The project focus was to demonstrate the feasibility of building an embedded telephone system firmware upon Open Source software while providing a consumer

usability Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a softw ...

experience.Orlet, Phillipp and Ramisch, Fritz
"Just Do It!"
, ''Studi38'' (magazine), Braunschweig Germany, Summer Semester 2010. Retrieved on 2010-07-28.Peißker, Stephanie
"Leuchtturm für die Region"
, '' "Braunschweiger Zeitung"'' (newspaper), Braunschweig Germany, 30 April 2010. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. After six months of private development, the firmware was released to the public on the 1 June 2007.Asterisk-Users Lis
"New Project: AskoziaPBX"
''Asterisk-Users List'' (mailing list post), 10 September 2007. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. During the next 14 months after the initial release, 24 public beta versions were released. At the end of this cycle, version 1.0 was published in September 2008.Site New
"1.0 Release Announcement"
''Site News'' (news entry), 12 September 2008. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. Minor fixes and language updates continued on the 1.0 branch until 1.0.3 was released in May 2009.Site New

''Site News'' (news entry), 29 May 2009. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. At this point, work had already begun on what was to become the 2.0 branch of the firmware, the current development series.Site New

''Site News'' (news entry), 14 October 2008. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. Since 2011, AskoziaPBX is developed by Benjamin-Nicola Lüken and Sebastian Kaiser. In August 2017, Askozia was acquired by 3CX Germany.3CX is Paving the Way for Rapid Growth in Germany with Askozia Acquisition
3 August 2017

Major features

AskoziaPBX is configured via a web-based configuration interface. It allows the configuration and interconnection of Analog,

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. ...

and

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

telephones and of provider lines. Telephone system features such as

voicemail A voicemail system (also known as voice message or voice bank) is a computer-based system that allows callers to leave a recorded message when the recipient has been unable (or unwilling) to answer the phone. Calls may be directed to voicemail m ...

, conference rooms, call parking,

call transfer A call transfer is a telecommunications mechanism that enables a user to relocate an existing telephone call to another phone or attendant console, using a transfer button or a switchhook flash and dialing the required location. The transferred c ...

s, fax-to-e-mail and

text-to-speech Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or Computer hardware, hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system conv ...

are supported. More functionality can be implemented with custom applications Open Source Meets Business Presentatio
"AskoziaPBX - Compact, Easily Configurable Open Source Hybrid Soft PBX for VoIP"
''Open Source Meets Business'' (conference presentation), Nuremberg Germany, 27 January 2009. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. or the Call Flow Editor. This is an additional software module for AskoziaPBX, which allows to create call queues, IVRs and other complex scenarios.Site Documentatio
"AskoziaPBX Call Flow Editor"
,''Site Documentation'' (cfe). Retrieved on 2012-07-05. The firmware stores its entire configuration in a single

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

file. This simplifies backing up and restoring installations. It takes care to only write to its internal storage when absolutely necessary. This is done to preserve write cycles on flash media, a typical installation media for embedded devices.AMOOCON Presentatio
"Trunk Groups are not Luggage Collections"
, ''AMOOCON'' (conference presentation), Rostock Germany, 4 June 2010. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. AskoziaPBX can run on systems with as little as 200 MHz and 64 MB of RAM. It runs on x86 and PowerPC architectures. Blackfin is only supported until software version 2.0.4.

Internationalization

Created in Germany and initially only available in the English language, the firmware and project have now been internationalized. The configuration interface, voice prompts and notification messages have all been translated into many languages. German, Italian, Spanish, French and Dutch are the most complete with less complete translations including Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Danish and Swedish.VoIP Users Conference Intervie
"AskoziaPBX"

''VoIP Users Conference''
(audio interview), 15 May 2009. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. AskoziaPBX is in use in over 175 countries.

Moving from FreeBSD to Linux

From late 2008 until mid 2009 the firmware was changed to use Linux as its operating system, replacing FreeBSD.Site New

''Site News'' (news entry), 8 July 2009. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. This process was contracted by Auerswald, a German telecommunications hardware manufacturer and was done for several reasons: Asterisk was, at the time, only officially supported on Linux. Also, FreeBSD does not support the Blackfin CPU architecture, the architecture used in Auerswald's target platform.AMOOCON Presentatio
"AskoziaPBX: Porting to Linux, Going for Mainstream"
, ''AMOOCON'' (conference presentation), Rostock Germany, 5 May 2009. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. Another Open Source project was forked and incorporated into the project to accomplish the difficult task of compiling, patching and assembling firmware images across multiple CPU architectures and target platforms. The T2 SDE project was stripped down to only include the software packages used in AskoziaPBX and then merged into the project as the new official build system.FLOSS Weekly Intervie
"AskoziaPBX"
''

FLOSS Weekly Leo Laporte (; born November 29, 1956) is the former host of '' The Tech Guy'' weekly radio show and founder of TWiT.tv, an Internet podcast network focusing on technology. He is also a former TechTV technology host (1998–2008) and a technology ...

'' (video interview), 7 July 2010. Retrieved on 2010-07-28. In July 2009, an alpha level release running on Linux was published. This was further stabilized into a beta release on 13 February 2010. The final production ready firmware was released as version 2.0 on 4 May 2010.VoIP Users Conference Intervie
"All About AskoziaPBX v2.0"

''VoIP Users Conference''
(audio interview), 7 May 2010. Retrieved on 2010-07-28.

References

{{Reflist, 2 Telephone exchange equipment Enterprise Linux distributions Asterisk (PBX) Linux distributions

History

Major features

Internationalization

Moving from FreeBSD to Linux

See also

References