From the ‘Open Source Heroes’ files:
The first time I spoke with Kevin Fleming, was back in 2006 about a new collaboration that Asterisk built at the time with Zimbra. I had spoke with Mark Spencer, the founder of Asterisk many times before, but Fleming was the ‘new’ guy, taking on a leadership role in the open source Asterisk VoIP project.
Fleming announced today that he is now moving on from Asterisk and its corporate parent Digium.
Across the last six plus years, I’ve seen and reported on the incredible leadership that Fleming brought to Asterisk – an open source project that I literally cannot live without. Asterisk in the beginning was an effort to provide an open source alternative to commercial PBX systems, and over the years it has grown to be a defacto standard for many of us.
While Fleming is leaving Digium, he’s not leaving open source.
“In the middle of September, I’ll start working for Bloomberg, L.P., in the Office of the CTO, helping to lead their nascent open source initiative,” Fleming wrote in a mailing list posting. “I’ll be working to bring the power of open source software, open standards, and community building to the financial market data services industry, where it is sorely needed (and overdue).”
Good luck Kevin – hope you have as much success at Bloomberg as you had at Digium.
Digium isn’t sitting idle either – they have already moved to try and replace the impossibly large shoes that Fleming filled. The new Asterisk project leader will be Matt Jordan and the Technical Lead for the project is now Mark Michelson.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
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