Hi Craig,
I see that some others have chimed in as well, but as the official FreeSWITCH "community guy" I thought it might be good for me to say a few things.
First off, welcome! We are glad you are investigating FreeSWITCH as a potential use candidate. We highly recommend that any prospective FS user do his or her due diligence. This is one area where we can all agree that OSS is awesome - you get to download it for free and take it for a test drive with no limitations.
As far as adoption rates go, please understand that the FreeSWITCH devs are not at all concerned with how many people are using it. We don't have Digium's marketing department, nor do we need it. I think our marketing can be summed up by looking at the first result from this google query:
The FS devs have a mantra: use what works for you. Specifically, use the right tool for your application/scenario/problem. Many people download trixbox or piaf and color it done. We have no problem with that. If those tools work for you then great. However, it has been our experience that a steady stream of Asterisk "refugees" have come over to FS because of situations similar to yours: "frustrations with Asterisk." (If you read Appendix B of the FreeSWITCH book you'll see that Anthony Minessale started the FreeSWITCH project in large part because of "Asterisk frustrations" - so don't think that you're alone.)
Perhaps the best thing to do to find out if FreeSWITCH is for you is to talk to some of our community members. We have a number of people who've made the jump from Asterisk to FreeSWITCH. I think they'll all agree that the pain is short-term but the benefits are long term. I would recommend two things:
#1 - Join #freeswitch on
irc.freenode.net. You'll find nearly 200 people there, many of whom can relate to your Asterisk frustrations and who are willing to talk to you.
#2 - Call in to the FreeSWITCH weekly conference call on Wednesday. It's at 1PM eastern, 10AM pacific. I'm the moderator of the call. More information can be found
here.
We think you will find our community is quite energetic and engaging. Oh, and we have a few people who are quite opinionated as well. :) You are welcome to come join us.
-Michael Collins (IRC: mercutioviz)