TOSI - Telephony Open Source Interface

Introduction to TOSI
The TOSI Roadmap
Get the Software
Join the Discussion on the Mailing List
CVS Access
Contact Info

Introduction to TOSI

Goals

The TOSI project aims to create tools that will make telephony easy for applications to use. It is being developed on and for the FreeBSD operating system. If you have a program that could usefully access telephony resources such as phones, modems, and Telephony Servers that communicate via an open protocol, then this software will be of use to you.

The primary component of the project is the TOSI library, and it's associated documentation, the TOSI API. As a simple example, if you wanted your calendaring application to call you at a specific time of day, you could use TOSI to simplify that operation. If you wanted to develop a complex screen-pop application for your call center, you could use TOSI to make that easy, too.

A secondary component of the TOSI project is a protocol implementation, called PSTC, that will allow the TOSI library, or any other software, to control servers. PSTC stands for The Protocol for Simple Telephony Control, and it will communicate signalling information such as client terminal settings and third-party call control. For example, your software could tell a SoftSwitch to "send all calls to voicemail", and "conference me in with Joe and Raj", using PSTC.

History

This project is sponsored by Walnut Creek CDROM, now BSDI, Inc., who contracted Open Source Telecom Corporation throughSourceXChange, to fullfill the TOSI RFP, which OST developed through a proposal into what you now see on Source Forge. The first draft of the PSTC protocol is being written by Rich Bodo, David Sugar, and David Rowe, and is based on the 1997 version of a protocol spec by Paul Davidson and Brian McConnel. The advisor for the project is Cullen Jennings.

The TOSI project is being released under the BSD license, which no longer contains an advertising clause, so it's compatible with use in GPL systems.

Roadmap

The following goals will be reached by December 31, 2000:

Create a system to test the PSTC protocol against. This involves:
- Building a telephony system to add to the Walnut Creek infrastructure.
- Porting the Bayonne Telephony Server, CommonC++, ccscript, aascript, and a driver for a multi-port telephony card to BSD.
- Demonstrating that we now have a server that a client app would want to control.
Design a library interface for client applications to use to access telephony resources. The interface should be simple and extensible and cover a broad range of terminal settings and third-party call control functions. This is the TOSI API.
Implement the TOSI Library.
Design a protocol for client control of telephony servers. This is the PSTC protocol.
Implement the PSTC Protocol.
Write a useful demo application.