I was moderating a panel on open source software this week at VON, and as the panelists were making references to Asterisk updates and open source community projects that were flying over my head, I started to wonder what the heck I was doing there. The open source community is one of the many self-contained clusters of constituents that VON caters to, and at first glance it seems like it doesn’t have much to do at all with our end of the telephony business--public network operators and service providers.

Yet, as the panel went on, the speakers began to drop the names of various service providers and talk about open source updates and fixes to things like hosted IP PBX platforms, and I began to be able to visualize how the open source community is beginning to intersect with the more traditional parts of the telephony world, and how it will become more of an influence.

Open source development may sound completely opposite of everything that telcos and their major vendors do in the course of their tightly controlled service and product developments, but that will have to change soon, simply because the sheer size and force of the open source armies out there can bring much more to the technology table than traditional telecom companies that in many cases are starting to outsource some aspects of the product process because they aren’t seen as core business functions.

Open source may not be a central issue now, and life-long telco types may see it as a young, rag-tag community, but everything matures. You can say that about VON itself. It used to be a fringe event focused on one thing--a budding VoIP community--but that community has matured and is evolving into the mainstream telecom community. Now, because of that, VON may be changing and losing what had seemed like its core mission for so long--to be a thorn in the side of the traditional telecom community. But, there are other embryonic subcultures at this show that in their own right are beginning to thrive. Open source is one, but there are more, and they’re all looking to mature because, while we may all long for our youthful vigor, it’s really wisdom of maturity that allows us to succeed, survive and have some kind of lasting impact.

E-mail me at doshea@telephonyonline.com.