freeswitch

FreeSWITCH is an open-source, software-defined telecom stack. Its stated goal is to move telephony away from proprietary switches toward a flexible software implementation that runs on commodity hardware, ranging from a Raspberry Pi to a multi-core server. The project is sponsored by SignalWire, founded by the original FreeSWITCH developers, and can interconnect with external networks and scale through that hosted platform. The source code is hosted on GitHub, where a development branch can be checked out and built for Linux, Windows, macOS and BSD. The repository also provides an issue tracker and pull request workflow. More detailed build and usage instructions are pointed to the FreeSWITCH-Explained documentation site. Installation options described in the README include installing from packages via the FSGET script (recommended), with step-by-step tutorials for Debian, Raspberry Pi and CentOS 7/RHEL 7. Building from source is documented with example Dockerfiles and tutorials for Debian (recommended), Raspberry Pi and CentOS 7. There is also guidance for building Debian packages using the FSDEB script. Prebuilt downloads include tarballs, a Windows installer and Windows sound packages. On the services side, the README highlights voice-over-IP capabilities such as SIP and SMS, plus app integrations. The bundled mod_signalwire module is described as a way to pair a FreeSWITCH instance with SignalWire and extend it. SignalWire also offers SMS, SIP, serverless application hosting and programmable telecom services. Documentation is indexed at the project's Confluence space, which includes release notes. Community support is centered on a Slack community where developers, the FreeSWITCH team and active users interact; a mailing list is noted as archived. Commercial support and professionally supported builds are available by contacting the core team. Contributions are accepted primarily through GitHub pull requests. Overall, the project targets users who need a programmable, self-hostable telephony platform rather than a proprietary switch, and it emphasizes portability across common operating systems and hardware.