best and worst of open source (Score 5, Insightful)

Asterisk exemplifies the best and worst elements of an open source project. The best being this is an awesomely powerful, infinitely configurable robust piece of software that is free and can replace otherwise extremely expensive proprietary systems. It is power to the masses in that a small company can have a comparable phone system to a big corporation that spends tens of thousands of dollars.

The worst is that there is a very steep learning curve. Configuration of both hardware and software is complex. While the documentation is thorough, it is not oriented towards the first time set-up.

Taken as a whole, though the good outweighs the bad, and it is worth investing in learning about it. This is great package. Tanks to the people who have been working on it, esp Mark at Digium.