Asterisk solutions 1.8 and 1.10 take centre stage

The past week has seen versions 1.4 and 1.6 of the open-source Asterisk solutions move into security-update-only mode, reports Digium.

Bryan Johns, community director for the IP telephony solutions provider, writes on the Inside the Asterisk blog that Asterisk solutions will now only receive feature enhancements for version 1.8 and, once it is released, 1.10.

Version 1.8 is subject to long-term support, meaning it is due to receive bug fixes and other enhancements until four years after its initial release date.

Its predecessor, version 1.4, also received long-term support, while versions 1.6 and 1.10 both fall into the standard support classification, with one year of updates.

At the end of the four-year or one-year period accordingly, each version continues to receive security patches, but no major continuing support to expand its feature set.

"In order to spur the evolution of Asterisk as technology the Asterisk community has to limit the extent to which we look backward and focus more of our available energy on the current and future versions of the software," Mr Johns explains.

The Digium community director has two decades of experience in the telecommunications sector and is currently responsible for the cohort of some 75,000 members who contribute to the development of Asterisk.