GNU developers have released a telephony stack, an open source alternative to competing proprietary VoIP solutions. The GNU telephony stack provides a sacalable environment for building and deploying enterprise level VoIP solutions compatible with current standards and hardware. With an emphasis on modularity and extensible functionality, the GNU telephony stack can be integrated with other systems and services like web servers and databases.
Sponsored by Tycho Softworks, which helps to maintain the GNU Bayonne telecommunications server, the project aims to simplify installation, configuration, and administration of VoIP technologies. In addition to Bayonne, the GNU telephony stack also includes the GNU RTP stack, the Open H.323 stack, and the GNU Gatekeeper H.323 calll server.
Although many of these applications and related utilities have been available under GPL licenses for quite some time, the GNU telephony project will provide a higher level of integration that will help push these technologies into the enterprise market. David Sugar, the owner of Tycho Softworks, comments:
"In GNU, there is individually Bayonne, and there are related and important projects, like GNOME Meeting, GNU Gatekeeper, and sip projects like libexosip2 and partysip (from antisip.com). All are freely licensed under the GPL, but none have been presented together for building complete solutions in this way before."
VoIP technologies are becoming extremely popular. Analysts predict that the VoIP market in Asia will increase from US$5.5 billion in 2004 to more than US$10 billion by 2009. Victor Liu says that the regulatory issues currently pose the most significant impediment to widespread adoption and further VoIP growth:
"[A]doption of local VoIP services is slow due to regulatory barriers in many countries and the dominance of incumbent players."
The unwavering avarice of big telecom has also become an impediment, with at least one major ISP publicly asserting that it will not allow competing VoIP services to operate over its lines. In response to the blatantly anti-competitive sentiment of such ISPs, House Energy and Commerce Committe Chairman Joe Barton has proposed a network neutrality law that will prevent monopolistic pressure from devesting VoIP innovation. VoIP technology is increasingly important in our highly connected world, and the availability of open source VoIP solutions will help popularize the technology in less developed countries where organizations can't afford the proprietary alternatives.
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