…or is it just me? As a user since the days of Rob and FreePBX being made “down under” - I understand a project cant live on bread and water, its all about funding, and having an ad campaign is a great thing - but when I open the module admin and FreePBX is no longer developed by “FreePBX” - it strikes me a bit odd.
When I first saw the name Schmoozecom (already quite familiar with them) pop up as developer on a half-dozen modules, I thought “cool, some commercial modules that they are offering to us, very enticing, I might buy a couple” - in fact I had a couple people buy them… But today, I cant tell whats commercial and what is “community” anymore - Free appears to be leaving the PBX.
I understand Schmoozecom is a major funder, long time contributor, and base of operations, and heck they deserve recognition for sure, I would prefer the name be plastered on the bottom, and even that they have a couple banners flying across the top, but when 97% of FreePBX is no longer developed by FreePBX - that kind of lights my fuse off- we appear getting heavy in to the bloatware isle leading down commercial row.
The other funny thing is a few of the commercial modules, they closely resemble a number of community contributed code snippets built many years ago - tactics like these remind me of the green monster that bought a great product and sunk it to the bottom of nothing back in ~2007.
I understand Philippe is now a full member of the Shmooze executive team, good for him, he deserves some paid vacations, does that now mean any code he writes is owned by Schmoozecom?? Interesting how Schmooze snatched up all the lead community devs under its hut (even Rob now), what kind of contract did they sign?? Was it GPL? Or something else tucked in a oak desk? leads to: how did PBXact come to be? I am not privy, but wasnt it “licensed code from somewhere…” - was it FreePBX? So a license was paid to wipe out the brand and paste in PBXact? - thats great, they should keep the PBXact product as is - they bought it fair n square, and it funded a lot of dev hours - but they should also leave FreePBX as is.
But now we appear to be in an alter-reality like I went to Ford and bought a dealership, but now I have decided since I sold a lot of trucks I want to change Fords name to JoeMoCo? Ford bought Jaguar a number of years ago - but did they put their name on it - no, that would destroy the brand = alienation of loyal customers.
I would like to suggest a bit of “tasteful discretion”, maybe revert back to circa ~Q1-2013 “Sponsored by Schmoozecom, check our PRO addons” in 2-3 locations instead of “Owned by Schmoozecom, soon to be renamed SchmoozePBX” - dont erase the FreePBX name as there are already talks on some other boards of “the next generation of Asterisk gui (not FreePBX)” - people will jump ship en-mass like SugarCRM is seeing.
Thanks for everything you guys do, I know there were millions of early AM hours, I just hope you can keep with the “spirit of community”, rather than turn the commercial corner.