A short history of Digium.com
Asterisk is a software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange (PBX) originally created in 1999 by Mark Spencer. Asterisk is released under a dual license model, using the GNU General Public License (GPL) as a free software license and a proprietary software license to permit licensees to distribute proprietary, unpublished system components. Source (wikipedia.org)
“Necessity (and in some cases simply being cheap) is truly the mother of invention. In 1999, having started Linux Support Services to offer free and commercial technical Support for Linux, I found myself in need (or at least in perceived need) of a phone system to assist me in providing 24-hour technical support. The idea was that people would be able to call in, enter their customer identity, and leave a message. The system would in turn page a technician to respond to the customer’s request in short
order. Since I had started the company with about $4000 of capital, I was in no position to be able to afford a phone system of the sort that I needed to implement this scenario. Having already been a Linux user since 1994, and having already gotten my feet wet in Open Source software development by starting l2tpd, gaim, and cheops, and in the complete absence of anyone having explained the complexity of such a task, I decided that I would simply make my own phone system using hardware borrowed from Adtran, where I had worked as a co-op student. Once I got a call into a PC, I fantasized; I could do anything with it. In fact, it is from this conjecture that the official Asterisk motto (which any sizable, effective project must have) is derived: “
It’s only software!
Source (Asterisk* The Future of Telephony) oreilly.com