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In anticipation of this transition to hangouts, We have added WebRTC support to FreeSWITCH, our Open Source Telephony and Voice application framework.
We have had support for Jingle for many years allowing communication with google voice and I suspect we will be able to use our new WebRTC functionality to connect Google hangouts to any voice applications you can make using FreeSWITCH http://www.freeswitch.org/

We are featuring WebRTC applications in August at our ClueCon conference http://www.cluecon.com/

Yep, closed-source has issues with security. That's why we run everything open-source. While we generally have to fix all the bugs, we definitely don't have to find them all, and users gladly submit bug reports and occasionally THEY supply a fix. You gotta love open-source!

BTW, if you like using Skype and like open-source software then check this out:
http://digg.com/d1rc3e

In any case, all you Skype users please practice safe telephony habits. :)
-MC

http://www.cluecon.com/

My name is Anthony Minessale, After considerable contribution to Asterisk I have learned a great deal about telephony here is a list of my personal contributions to Asterisk: http://www.cluecon.com/anthm.html

The biggest lesson I have learned is that the fundamentals of Asterisk are built on assumptions and hard coded limitations. The flow chart for its code will make you dizzy:

http://www.freeswitch.org/astdoc/structast__channe l__coll__graph.jpg
http://www.freeswitch.org/astdoc/pbx_8c__incl.jpg

People who use asterisk from the outside wouldn't know there is absolutely no structure or discipline in the code and may not care. But once they invest a ton of time trying to make their dream Telco or whatever their dreams may be, the truth is all too obvious. Spoken from experience, only a seasoned technical wizard with years of computer skills to boast will ever be able to successfully implement Asterisk beyond a modest implementation. To truly understand how Asterisk works holds only a slightly smaller prerequisite. To those who find this unimportant, I understand your point, but be aware that Asterisk, being an open source project, needs to have a somewhat easy learning curve to attract new developers especially considering the developer turnover they suffer due to the maddening politics their community has to offer. The development is focused on owning all the code even if it means re-inventing things that already exist just to maintain the right to sell the code. This practice is fine with me though I am less than pleased by the end result when the home-rolled version is a poor contender with several existing solutions. The modular intentions of Asterisk are great though there is no structure there either. Any module can dig its way into nearly all of the code of the core and often, inexperienced module programmers will re-implement existing functionality to the extent that even inside the same C source file, you may find multiple versions of the same functions with different names. The other problem with Asterisk modules are that many of the in-tree modules carry cross dependencies that make it impossible for the core to function without them. Some modules even depend on each other. This practice limits the portability since many operating systems will not tolerate one dynamic object from using symbols from another without hard linking them together. This is not the worst offense as far as portability; there are dozens more with many being accredited to Linux-specific assumptions. Apart from the technology problems the biggest remaining problem to consider is the community. The first experience for most Asterisk newcomers is an IRC channel where people fight for supremacy like information hungry pirates hording what they know and then sticking it to people for being so "stupid". (In other words, in the same boat they were in a few months back.) For those of us who are experienced developers, we are used to the l33t thing. The deal breaker is the issue management process. Submissions will generally be ignored for months then a one sentence overview will command the developer to fix minor issues and resubmit. This is almost tolerable if the submitted code was a new feature but more times than not it also happens with meaningful clean-up and repair of broken core functionality. I have heard this same complaint from countless ex-asterisk contributors over the past year and I am sure it is the number one cause of their ex status.

In conclusion, I actively develop Asterisk code but now I only do it as a consultant. I am quite good at it and I know what I am talking about and I feel that the issues with Asterisk will never be addressed because there may be more Asterisk users every day but there are also less developers every day too and soon all the developers will be

You can also come to Cluecon. Cluecon is a PBX Developers conference that will help to give you some ideas about what you can do with Asterisk and other VOIP technologies.

http://www.cluecon.com/

but, It is out of the scope of the language to be responsible for how it will be implemented in a browser when a browser is not the only application it is able to be implemented in. The Document and Browser objects in JavaScript are not standard they are addon's used when the language is applied to a document rendering model. Therefore the developers who implement the marraige of JavaScript to a browser are indeed responsible to make sure it does not raise any security concerns. When I added JavaScript to Asterisk I had to implement serurity features that only make sense in a PBX and I would not have expected the language to come standard with a way to handle that situation. See http://www.cluecon.com/res_js.html for reference

It may be possible for JavaScript to help evil-doers but it's up to the implementer of the Application using the engine to avoid that, not the language or its core developers. If every invention that could potentially be used for evil was struck down there would be nothing left. JavaScript can do plenty of good and the developers of the open source engines have gone out of their way to make it well documented, embeddable and extensible so you can add it to almost anything that needs a little help with a language parser. In fact, I myself have recently added JavaScript to the Asterisk PBX system to drive IVR and it works quite well without much concern for exploits. RES_JS for Asterisk: http://www.cluecon.com/res_js.html