[ Thanks to David Sugar
for this announcement: ]
I originally started the ACS project as a GPL licensed
multi-line voice telephony server, with the goal to be the most
flexible and advanced telephony voice messaging server available.
While this project has yet to fully achieve this goal, ACS does
enable one to deploy usable voice response solutions today using
GNU/Linux and hardware from either Quicknet, Voicetronix, or Pika
technologies.
ACS evolved over time without clear enough direction, and I
found it to be lacking in several key respects. Initially I started
a re-write of the ACS code base. In the process the package was
redesigned with a different and broader set of goals. This work has
become known as the Bayonne Package. Bayonne, and by extension,
ACS, have became a package in the GNU project as of May 1st. This
action occurred concurrently with the founding of GNUCOMM, the GNU
Telecom project, to bring immediate telephony functionality to the
GNU project.
The current release of ACS is 0.5.7, and is being made
immediately available as a GNU package. This release is currently
available for download from Voxilla and SourceForge.
ACS is available from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bayonne
and associated mirrors.
Bayonne is still in formative development. Bayonne has been made
available through anonymous cvs access from subversions.gnu.org
under the module name “bayonne”. At some point in the near future
cvs “snapshot” distributions of Bayonne will become available for
early testing under GNU/Linux. The first complete release of
Bayonne will be referred to as Bayonne 0.6.0, and will at that
point in time or shortly thereafter depreciate the ACS code
base.
Some have asked why the package name was changed. I felt there
are several reasons for doing this. First, I have received numerous
complaints over the use of the name ACS in that it is similar to
Al’s Circuit Simulator and several other packages. Also, I had
originally wanted a name that was more than a 3 letter acronym.
Bayonne is taken from the name of the Bayonne “bridge”, and
represents the idea of this package as a bridge between the
computer and telephony worlds. Finally, I wanted to bring across
the idea that Bayonne is different than a “1.x” or “2.0” derived
release of ACS.
Further information about Bayonne may be found from http://www.bayonne.cx. A new home page
will also appear for Bayonne on gnu.org shortly. While Bayonne is
meant to offer a superset of ACS features and functionality, it
does so in a very different and much more modular fashion. Bayonne
will also introduce call bridging and TDM bus functionality and
will offer a bridge between the worlds of analog, digital, and IP
based telephony.
As the GNU maintainer of Bayonne, I welcome all suggestions and
comments from those interested in free telephony, and I may be
reached directly through e-mail as dyfet@ostel.com. I also fully
welcome additional contributors to the Bayonne project and and
would be quite happy in helping others start their own free
telephony related packages and projects.
David Sugar,
Bayonne and Common C++ GNU Maintainer