As an open source project, we would expect Asterisk to have at least some basic community support that we could rely on. Asterisk does have this and it has quite a bit more as well. It has mailing lists, forums, and IRC as well as official support from Digium. We don't always require commercial support. However, if running Asterisk is not our core responsibility or if we have other constraints, then having paid technical support on hand can be a resource we would welcome.
There are a few mailing lists available for unofficial Asterisk support, by far the most active being provided by Digium itself. They are frequented by Digium staff as well as Asterisk users and are probably the best source of information when it comes to quick opinions or support from the community. They are found at http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo.
The USERS mailing list is the best choice for support issues.
There is also the VOIPSEC mailing list provided by www...