Digium has announced the formation of the Asterisk Advisory Council to assist in the overall management of Asterisk, including the selection and supervision of community developers, release cycles, and contributions. The council consists of Brian Capouch, Assistant Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department at Saint Joseph’s College; Olle E. Johansson, Asterisk Developer, consultant and Evangelist, founder of Edvina AB, Sweden; Tilghman Lesher, Developer for VCCH, Inc.; Jeremy McNamara, Founder of The NuFone Network, the first Asterisk-based Inter-Asterisk eXchange (IAX) provider; and John Todd of the Tello Corporation.

“As the Asterisk market continues to grow rapidly on a daily basis, we saw the need to expand the team managing the open source project,” said Kevin Fleming, co-maintainer of Asterisk and senior software engineer at Digium. “By identifying these key community members to participate in our council, we can ensure that the project continues to add innovations and improve without any delays.”

Steering an open source project can be difficult, especially one that’s getting as much attention and uptake as Asterisk is these days. They’re sure to be pulled in many directions. Congratulations to O’Reilly Network author John Todd and to Brian Capouch, based on their inclusion I have a very good feeling about this group.