understood
Kind of a tone-deaf and non-sequitur message really. You’re writing to a CEO about chanspy, really?
With “security” defined in your own narrow way.
because 2FA is available in every OSS you use? How about almost none?
come on man…
act like it.
Folks want the head of a company to take the open source community seriously, there’s a right way to do it (see @fredposner 's post for example) and there’s otherwise…
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No, they aren’t necessarily - because the SIP provider gives them a specific IP (or range of very very narrow IP’s) that the trunk connections need to be made from, and they can configure an access list on a firewall to or a router to only allow their FreePBX system to be accessed by those numbers.
I presume if you are buying SIP trunks from someone you are going to trust them well enough that they won’t be hacking into your PBX. And if they do, well if you were smart you would have signed an agreement with them that means they cannot disclaim liability if that happens and they will owe you big time.
You also have the option of doing a bastion host setup. You can put a SIP gateway in that converts Internet SIP trunks to “internal” SIP trunks or you can really old school it with 2 routers with PRI cards in them, connected back-to-back, and one connected to your uncontrolled Internet and the other to your internal network.
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Not anymore. When I still ran my consultancy, I proposed FreePBX several times - never got any takers. People instead badgered me into finding crappy old hybrid key systems to replace their crappy old hybrid key systems that died, when they died. At one time there used to be a lot of people wheeling and dealing in old hybrid key systems and the market was flooded. But over time more of that migrated to Ebay and more “phone techs” retired or otherwise got out of the market. And, the “office supply” companies started moving into that space.
You have never seen a VoIP cloud system quite as effed up as one installed by a photocopier leasing company that decided they wanted to “get into cloud phone systems” That was happening the last few years I was running my IT consultancy and it always pissed me off that customers would go to those companies that knew diddly squat about telephony, and ignore me who had dealt with much of that for many years. And what tore it the most was when the photocopier copier company would have the customer buy all new switches (because their techs supposedly didn’t know how to configure any other kind of switch) and then I STILL would end up being the one who would plug in a console cable to the switch and configure it.
And, unlike the older phone techs who welcomed me “translating” concepts like call queues to their customers, the photocopier “office supply companies” did NOT want me involved at all, probably because they were afraid they would lose the subscription.
I eventually realized that over the last 15 years of my consultancy (which like most IT consultancies focused on smaller under 50 employee business customers) that the “computer intelligence level” of my customers was falling. Literally, business owners were getting dumber and dumber and dumber when it came to tech, and were easy prey for any slick salesman/saleswoman who would show up, promise everything for nothing and deliver nothing, maybe flash a skirt or so, and they basically were valuing advanced expertise lower and lower. Their attitudes were basically “make it work and I don’t want to know jack about it” Then COVID hit and half of them with that attitude basically went out of business, and I just got disgusted with it all.
Yet, interestingly, the larger corps over this time were seeing a lower and lower quality of IT techs. So, ultimately, what I realized is that 80% of the techs in the business were pretty much looking for the same thing that the business owners were looking for - to not have to know jack squat about the tech, and just pay someone else to run it for them.
The “new generation” of IT consultancies that service small businesses are absolutely horrendous. We are talking techs who literally spend all day long on various 800 numbers because literally everything they buy -must- be under a service contract. Wanna buy a wifi access point? You too can get your Meraki business wifi access point and pay $250 a year for it. Subscription only, of course.
Well maybe a small 50 person corp can afford that when they have 4 access points - but a large corp can’t. The enterprise I’m in has 42 APs in the field and that’s not nearly enough I just bought another 30 of them. None under subscription. They don’t have 17 thousand dollars a year to send to Cisco to pay for an 800 number (actually, they do but I have a lot better uses for that money than paying TAC’s Indian support people)
These days in tech - if you don’t know anything - you can make good money selling solutions to other people who also don’t know anything. But if you know stuff, you can make far more money working for a large org that’s too big to be run by the “let’s call the 800 number because the server died again and I don’t know why”
So right now I only have ONE phone system to deal with so I’ve moved from a lot of small stuff with few extensions to one big one with lots of extensions.
As a new comer to PBX and even more so these forums, happy to hear it. I hope you can save me from becoming TBOFH.
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Russian, Chinese, yellow, black, blue, green, Whatever. we are always each other’s bad guys. 
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Hi.
Sounds good, but wait and see. 
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Thank you @csalameh, this gives me some confidence. I have already initiated our exit from FreePBX, due to the pettiness and bickering played out in this forum, which moved this product into a very high risk category.
I can’t afford to let down our customers because of the fall-out from internal politics or sudden changes in policy/support/existence of FreePBX, so I had to take action, by migrating away.
Based on this commitment, I will pause our migration, and wait a little while to see whether the landslide stabilises. The bickering has to stop though, it’s destructive.
S
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You should be seeing now Franck - no need to wait, I’m engaging , we have already made several improvements and investments in the platform , I met yesterday with the core engineering team for FreePBX and saw the roadmap of what’s to come in Q3and q4 and the development program i am supporting. As i said - we are committed to ensuring this platform provides opportunities for Sangoma and the community who can use it to innovate for the good of our Clients. Can you provide me some specific details on how you can help us and us help you?
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@Simply Sip – Thank you. I understand the frustration, and I wasn’t a fan of the bickering either—it doesn’t help anyone. Instead, let’s focus on solutions. Share your ideas on how we can support the platform, the community, and Sangoma, not just to maintain it, but to turn it into a driver of innovation and differentiation.
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Well if there is a road map for Q3/Q4, then perhaps having that publicly available would be helpful to see the direction of things. Mainly for the OSS parts as I can understand keeping certain commercial aspects under wraps.
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the usual suckups continue to not surprise anyone, do you Bill and whats his name, I stopped reading teddles’s posts a long time ago, he has a long sordid history on mailing lists, so I learned long time ago never to feed that troll.
I did not realise Charles handed over the reigns of the company to you, ohh, he hasnt, then I’m sure he can speak for himself, however I note he has not addressed my comment so maybe you are the new CEO, you clearly act like it.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks so, Bill, but I commend you for not going off on a war and peace length rant like the king troll ted does everytime, boring everyone to death.
I can’t imagine why he hasn’t taken your complaints as his top priority.
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To be fair he decided to block me on social media. When a member of the board ignores shareholders it says a lot. Being that he also makes money off my work means he should care about what I say even at the smallest level. Instead inside baseball says he passed a memo to tell everyone not to engage with me. I actually hoped when Wignall left the company would turn around. It hasn’t. In fact many have been around long enough to see this as history repeating itself. Back then there was a mountain of people that were open source people who have all mostly left since. One reason I left is I would have two choices to get anything done on the open source side. I would either have to beg, or ask forgiveness over permission. That is why backup supports other services now. I didn’t ask I just did it. I as a father of 4 always tell me kids to not tell me, show me. I don’t want corporate lip service or damage control. I want to see action and progress. To add one more cliche the proof is in the pudding. Also note I’ve mostly avoided this post to let others speak. I understand any suggestions I make seem to go in the round file simply because of associations and corporate politics.
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Hi James, Inside baseball - secret memos? I am unclear what this means, but if you are referring to me personally, I would appreciate you not do that - I certainly did not spend my time trying to ban you from social media - i don’t believe we have ever even met, talked emailed or had any contact - who exactly are you and what do you do? If you did leave the group as you mentioned in your note, why are you still engaging? I’m confused and somewhat surprised by the tone of your recent and past comments and wanted to respond briefly . I’m unsure where the frustration/anger is stemming from or what you believe is owed to you James or Clearly IP the company i believe you work for( who competes with Sangoma), but I want to clarify my intentions - again.
Perhaps there’s a misunderstanding about my role here. My engagement in this forum has been about fostering growth and collaboration and letting the community know I would like to remain committed to innovation through this platform - I am not an experts in this space as you all are but i understand the technology as does my team I did not join to be engaging in misinformation or divisive discourse. I joined this platform with the belief that it was an active, intelligent space for technology leaders to share insights and support each other’s development. Certainly, not what I am seeing at least from some - I don’t understand how folks see any of this as helpful.
My aim has been to explore how our investments can benefit the broader community, our shareholders—who support these initiatives—and the dedicated men and women of Sangoma. If this forum does not align with that purpose, I may need to reassess my participation. I have asked my team to obtain ideas , inputs, suggestions from this community and bring those to me , as per my original note, that brings value to ALL parties. We are a publicly traded company with obligations to those who invest in us - The collective US and my role is to ensure we provide a return for that investment.
That said, I remain open to constructive dialogue and collaboration. If there is an opportunity to realign and focus on shared growth, I am all for it.
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i will ask me team to assess what we would feel comfortable sharing within a public group that does not cross any confidential lines.
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Thanks Charles!
Last month, the OS team at Sangoma updated the calendar for FreePBX Versions planning. This should greatly help community members by providing some guideposts to their deployment timelines.
New relevant OS highlights to share this week include a slide from the AstriCon 2025 session video “From FreePBX 16 to 17: A Journey Of Remarkable Transformation” starting at 46:25 on YouTube. In case YT vids are blocked for you, here’s a picture of the slide (wiki text version coming soon):
When other members of the management team failed to respond to my concerns including those about fiscal responsibility I contacted you through several mediums including email and linked in where your account blocked me. I assume you are in control of that account but I may have assumed incorrectly. No other members of the executive team blocked me.
Who am I? I am a Sangoma shareholder.
The specific types of fiduciary duties that a CEO has to the shareholders include the following:
Duty of care, meaning taking appropriate steps to gain information before making a decision
Duty of loyalty, meaning acting in the best interests of the company and its owners
Duty of disclosure, meaning that the CEO fully informs the shareholders, board of directors and owners of any significant issues the company faces
I am also an active contributor of code including up to probably 30-50% of FreePBX. It seems weird you claim not to know who I am then call out my employer. Fun fact I’ve been around a long time and have worked for Sangoma, as well as former competing companies in the hardware space. We all worked together in the software space. As a CEO in this space it brings bigger concern if you think my employer is competition. Open Source telephony/UC holds very little market share. You should be going after the big dogs in the space and grabbing market share.
I’m not sure where I said I left a group. I don’t even know what group you speak of. I have left Sangoma and I have generally stayed quiet on this specific post so it did’t detract from what it could be. It never became that.
Oddly the things that got me banned all came with receipts. Am I going to tell you who told me about the directive to not engage with me? No because i wouldn’t want to see them meet the fate of an employee every one loved that suddenly left the company after they spoke up. I’m sure you are aware who she was but I’m not going to post private information. All receipts posted were public information from a public company which I am an investor in.
Calling your user base and customers dumb is not a good way to foster growth and collaboration.
Usually when I don’t understand something or am not an expert in something I yield to those who are. I was always told if you’re the smartest person in the room you’re in the wrong room. You come saying you want to listen and build but then get mad this isn’t an echo chamber. Many of us have been around through multiple Sangoma leadership changes and multiple stewards of FreePBX. Many of us have also been involved in open source and the unicorn that is monetization of open source. As this has been a struggle perhaps sit back and listen to people outside of your expertise. We all have something to learn.
I am both of those. Nice to meet you. I have supported this community and contributed to FreePBX long before I was a staff developer, and over the last 5ish years as a non employee again. These contributions are outside of my employment and are done because I have been a long standing leader in this space. I’m sure my employer would prefer I didn’t contribute back but they give me the freedom to do so. One of the reasons I gave management when I left is I prefer to be a community contributor because I have more latitude.
We are on the same page here. Which is why I originally reached out to you.
I am on the same page here too. I just ask that you look at outside perspectives. There is nothing constructive about an echo chamber. Nobody has ever grown from hearing everything they know already repeated back to them.
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Thank you for your response James. btw - your company name is in your profile line FYI. have a good day. I am not sure what i can do with this.
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@BlazeStudios did specifically state just for the OSS (which means Open Source Software):
Mainly for the OSS parts as I can understand keeping certain commercial aspects under wraps.
There really can’t be anything confidential in OSS…
I appreciate your participation here. I would suggest that the people you are talking with don’t particularly respond well to “corporate speak” and are looking for simple, direct answers about the ways that Sangoma will continue to support open source (and what you feel are the ways in which you are supporting open source).
Thanks again.
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