The Asterisk.org development team has published Asterisk version 1.6.0-beta1. Everyone is encouraged to help test Asterisk 1.6, so that the release may be available soon.

Asterisk 1.6 will be the first major release of Asterisk since 1.4, which was released just over one year ago. This release contains a number of new features, as well as architectural improvements for improved performance.

A list of the new features is available in the CHANGES file:

http://svn.digium.com/view/asterisk/tags/1.6.0-beta1/CHANGES?view=co

Asterisk 1.6 also brings about a new release management style. This release management policies have been changed for Asterisk 1.6 to account for some of the things we have learned while maintaining Asterisk 1.2 and 1.4 in the past. For more information on the new release management policy, see the following thread on the asterisk-dev mailing list:

http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-dev/2007-October/030083.html

The support levels for Asterisk 1.2 and 1.4 will not change in the near future. There are no current plans as to when the support of those releases will change. Those decisions will be made as a result of discussions in the developer community when the time comes, and a public announcement will be made
with plenty of advance notice before anything changes.

Thank you for the support, and we look forward to your feedback on this release!