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Asterisk Breeds A Cottage Industry
gardel writes "The open-source PBX is popular, powerful and affordable. But setting up and maintaining Asterisk in its distributed form is a technical challenge for even the most accomplished of geeks. Now, Voxilla reports, several new companies (more than 60, at last count), smelling a good business opportunity, offer simplified graphical front-ends for Asterisk. And more are on the way."
A setup/administration GUI is what Red Hat sells(sold?), what SuSE sells, what Mandrake(or whatever it's called now), Xandros, and Linspire sell... This is probably a sign that Asterisk is here to stay. Or since we knew that already, that Asterisk not finished growing anytime soon.
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
I see there are a few CLI purists in this thread, and I understand their point. Granted, a GUI adds bloat. It isn't as pure. And yes, major PBX systems like Meridian are all CLI.
On the other hand, GUI's are a blessing for people that are smart enough to know what needs to happen but who might need a reminder or two to hit every config point. When I can see an option in a GUI panel versus having to juggle 60 or so config files in my mind I am a lot better off.
My guess is that most FOSS folks here are on the data and not voice networking side. Conversely, I just got done overseeing a T1 circuit install for a customer move and had an opportunity to talk with the PBX guy. I mentioned Asterisk and got a blank look in return.
If a GUI would help spur adoption of this technology by making it a tad easier to use for us data types, I am all for it.