AskoziaPBX is a
closed source
Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and inte ...
telephone system (or "
PBX")
firmware. It is a fork of the
m0n0wall
m0n0wall was an embedded firewall distribution of FreeBSD, one of the BSD operating system descendants. It provides a small image which can be put on Compact Flash cards as well as on CD-ROMs and hard disks. It runs on a number of embedded pla ...
project and uses the
Asterisk 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, AskoziaPBX was modified to run on
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
creating a new Linux distribution for this purpose. Running on Linux it has also been expanded to run on
Blackfin and
PowerPC 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 Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was intr ...
.
History
AskoziaPBX was started as a proof-of-concept project by Michael Iedema at the
Ostfalia - School of Applied Sciences in
Wolfenbüttel
Wolfenbüttel (; nds, Wulfenbüddel) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District. It is best known as the location of the internationally renowned Herzog August Library and for having the largest ...
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 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. Work ...
and VoIP
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...
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 users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to ind ...
, conference rooms A conference hall, conference room, or meeting room is a room provided for singular events such as business conferences and meetings.
Room
It is commonly found at large hotels and convention centers though many other establishments, including even ...
, call parking, call transfers, fax-to-e-mail and text-to-speech 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 arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
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
Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use t ...
, 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.
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 , 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
The T2 SDE (System Development Environment) is an open source Linux distribution kit. It is primarily developed by René Rebe.
History
ROCK Linux was started in the summer of 1996 by Claire Wolf. T2 SDE was forked in 2004, when developers where ...
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
FLOSS Weekly is a free and open-source software ( FLOSS) themed netcast from the TWiT Network. The show premiered on April 7, 2006, and features interviews with prominent guests from the free software/open source community. It was originally hoste ...
'' (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.
See also
* List of SIP software – other SIP related programs
References
{{Reflist, 2
Telephone exchange equipment
Enterprise Linux distributions
Asterisk (PBX)
Linux distributions