Thanks Fred - good feedback and received. I have a competent team, a stable and now financially strong company and a much more informed understanding of FreePBX and its value. Sorry for what was perceived as corporate talk but we are a corporate company and I lead it that way. I believe the best use of my time is to use this enhanced knowledge to support the professionals on my team and our engineers with continued funding for the platform and educating myself( through them) on the platform itself and its contributions to the growth of Sangoma. As we begin planning our FY 26 budget I will look to Nenad and Mike to bring me an investment plan that helps the company and in turn this community. Thanks
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Will you re-phrase/re-parse " have a good day. I am not sure what i can do with this" because to me I read you giving @jfinstrom the ‘finger’ who has been #freed already.
Otherwise, welcome to these fora.
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One of the concerns raised here is that modules to help secure the software are licensed. Other concerns posted are that almost any “innovation” for FreePBX modules seem to also be licensed.
A statement about FreePBX contributing to the growth of Sangoma, doesn’t help address the question of “what is Sangoma doing to support open source?” An optimist would hopefully read your statement as by actively supporting open source, incorporating new features (open source), etc, Sangoma believes we can increase profits on related software such as PBXact as well as SIP trunking, phones,…
A pessimist could read the statement and think that if Sangoma doesn’t make money of FreePBX, FreePBX won’t continue.
This is where clear, open language and engagement can help you.
Sangoma clearly is a corporation. No one thinks otherwise. But open source is, by definition, open and free to use, see, build upon, etc. Sangoma as company should clearly identify if their support of FreePBX and Asterisk is dependent on receiving profit from FreePBX/Asterisk.
My opinion is a clear, direct statement would be helpful.
Thank you again for your time.
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And as a aside , can I ask if you know of any of @jfinstrom 's code being present in any of your closed source modules ?
I have stayed quite here so far but maybe a simpler question to ask @csalameh is this. What does it mean to Sangoma to be a steward of both FreePBX and Asterisk?
As you do not own FreePBX or Asterisk. Hundreds of developers have contributed code to the two projects and in the open source world you do not own the products exclusively due to every contributor having copyright on the code they wrote that the projects accepted into the code base. The contributors and their copyright including Sangoma contributions own the product. You are the trademark holder and in the OSS world it’s referred to being the “Steward”. Anyone can come remove that word FreePBX or Asterisk and name it “foo” and now your trademark enforcement vanishes since they are no longer using the exclusive trademark that Sangoma owns.
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My code is certainly in commercial modules. That said my code is likely there as part of my former employment to which they have full rights to. I would also say most new code is probably based on my documentation which they also own. I also think the CLA says they have license to anything I give back to the project. In other words, IANAL but I assume there is no legal issue with any of my code being used commercially by Sangoma
Developer hereby grants Sangoma and its successors and assigns a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable, non-exclusive, and transferable license to use, reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, distribute the Submissions, and to sublicense such rights to others. The rights granted may be exercised in any form or format, and Sangoma may distribute and sublicense to others on any licensing terms, including without limitation: (a) open source licenses like the GNU General Public License (GPL), or the Berkeley Science Division license (BSD); or (b) binary, proprietary, or commercial licenses. If the Submission is derived from software released by Sangoma under the GPL, Sangoma, as licensor thereof, waives such requirements of the GPL as applied to that software to the limited extent necessary to allow Developer to provide the Submission and the foregoing license to Sangoma.
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Side note it was standard practice and in the developer docs to use
So technically every time that is run they are using “my code” that fully skeletons out a module for you. Honestly I don’t know why I don’t use it anymore. I think most things I write now don’t need the full module structure only like 3 files are actually required. The module.xml, the BMO class and page.rawmame.php which is technically optional but I’ve seen goofyness if it isn’t there
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As I posted a week ago you have a changing market in telephony these days. But I’m going to summarize what I am seeing.
The PBX market has a gigantic number of small customers (8 and fewer extensions) a huge number of more bigger sized customers (10-100 extensions) a large number of more medium sized customers (100-500 extensions) a moderate number of big customers (500-2000 extensions) and a small number of huge customers (thousands to tens of thousands of extensions)
Well you should get the idea - there’s an inverse relationship between number of customers out there and number of extensions. I’m sure your marketing people have their own graphs.
What I have seen happening over the last 10 years is more and more of the small customers are moving to cloud shared solutions. And I DO NOT mean spinning up an AWS session or an azure session or whatever and installing FreePBX into that. I mean a full shared solution where the customer has ZERO access or control over the back end - cloud solutions like what Ring Central, Cisco Webex calling, and so on are providing.
Note that this is phone calls. During this time there’s been a frantic amount of work by those shared instance cloud providers to attempt to “converge” video into telephony. Cisco webex calling is an example. Their hope was to smoosh together the videoconferencing and the telephone calls into a big messy octopus product that would put a dozen golden handcuffs on customers. Most of that work, however, seems to have failed as few customers have bought into convergence. It’s not surprising for example that Cisco EOLed it’s 88xx video desk phones but did not EOL it’s 78xx non-video deskphones. The video deskphones were only useful to Cisco as a way of getting customers to call into webex video conferencing meetings and so on with a desk phone instead of a PC running a softphone - when Cisco’s research showed customers regarded that as kind of stupid and didn’t do it - Cisco lost interest in manufacturing and selling videophones.
Now I can see that Sangoma has a full cloud product which I’m assuming you developed because of this - you don’t publish figures but I’m sure you have far more smaller customers than larger ones on it.
My take on it is that all makers of PBXes have this same graph I outlined, and their biggest question is when is the market going to settle? When is it going to become common knowledge in IT that going to cloud is fine for…say…50 extensions but is stupid for 51? (keep in mind I am just pulling the breakpoint of 50/51 out of my hat - I don’t know what it is but it’s probably higher than that) and so, when are they going to stop seeing the entrance of the super large companies with tens of thousands of extensions into the cloud and the softening of the smaller companies (above 1000 extensions and below 10,000) entering into the cloud and the ending of the smaller companies (under 1000 extensions) into the cloud?
Marketing and selling to these different customer groups is by now pretty established, a good marketer knows how to design campaigns into those groups. But your problem - and the problem of all the PBX makers - is you just don’t know yet WHAT products you need to be selling into what groups? Who do you market shared cloud to, who do you market virtual PBXes to (those are different from cloud even though they are in the cloud) who do you market turnkey on prem to and who do you market DIY on-prem or virtual solutions like FreePBX to? (since it can be both)
I can see that one of the larger PBX makers - Cisco - is very uncertain about this which is why innovation in their latest UCM products has died. They are just brushing up the nameplates and up-reving the version numbers and pushing last years junk out as this years junk. Sangoma has also been accused of doing this with the “Port” of FreePBX from CentOS to Debian.
In this kind of lackadaisical market where the new stuff has no “must have” features in it, customers tend not to buy anything, and instead just keep the old stuff going. I personally don’t know what the next “must have” feature is in telephony, or if there will even be one. But I can also see this same product malaise hitting many tech sectors. Intel for example is losing millions because of it.
All I can tell you is - I’ve seen these cycles in tech before and the companies that survive them concentrate on strengthening their core product. Instead of seeking that key “next generation must have feature” I encourage you to direct your developers to focus on bug fixing, adding in minor requested features, and other unglamorous aspects of strengthening a software package.
Good luck!
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hi together,
also haven‘t been here for years but all this reading makes me sad.
FreePBX for me always belongs to Tony Lewis, Rob Thomas and their great Team. After they left all the experience and knowledge is gone.
Also Andrew Nagy and a lot of Team Members always helped me out with issues for free without any charge as long i provided all logs and information about my issues.
All those great people are gone. How should FreePBX ever grow again when all the knowledge is gone or not available anymore?
Thats just my personal oppinion.
I hope you guys find a way back together as a Team There is a lot of know-how still reading here.
Regards,
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I have no idea why I read this as I usually speed scroll past Teddles’s war and peace rants, I think it was the numbers in the above that caught my eye, so being the Saturday morning sucker that I am, I read that bit and would pretty much agree with Ted.
In my region, on FreePBX we have 6 hotels/motels/caravan/RV parks on books, all up, about 90 exts. 104 small businesses ( general, lawyers, real estate etc) that average 6 exts each, used to have mining camp on fpbx but for other reasons had to move them to 3cx, and 3 government clients with around 2800 exts - however onsite fpbx loses them to onsite 3CX (thats currently in progress will be completed within next week) due to federal mandate on 2FA coming into effect (I need to thank @billsimon there too for reminding me to act like a CEO and stop pestering sangoma to do the right thing about security and use something that is fit for purpose that has it built in at no additional costs. (excellent deal on 3cx) Thanks Bill.
ohh and I are not including micro businesses numbers who use hosted (broadsoft) solutions as thats irrelevant to this discussion.
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Indeed, 2FA should be open source and not as a commercial module.
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Was my error to criticize; I’m sorry and please do not @ me again.
I’m not sure the “You won’t give me MFA for free so I’ll pay 3CX for it” is the burn you think it is.
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As I said in my analysis post (that nickzed agreed with, amazing):
“direct your developers to focus on bug fixing, ADDING IN MINOR REQUESTED FEATURES”
Time will provide clarity on how the market will split. I see many hopeful signs. Interest in cloud solutions among the medium sized and large customers is dying. “Cloud repatriation” is now a thing among some of the largest early adopters who fell for the marketing BS. And that includes the idea of spinning up virtual private servers online in AWS and Azure.
The on prem PBX market is one market. The “cloud virtual image PBX” market is another market. The cloud shared server is yet another. Marketing that attempts to conflate the last two into a single name “cloud” isn’t the Magic Touch that it used to be and will no longer guarantee a sale. Quit worrying about the Cloud advertising marketing FUD juggernaut killing your FreePBX market, customers are smarter than you think.
Personally, I have no interest in 2FA for a PBX, but if I was running Sangoma, reading the words “onsite fpbx loses them to onsite 3CX” would have me calling for a meeting with all dev heads Monday morning and saying “how quickly can we get 2FA into FPBX”
Are you listening, @csalameh ?
He didn’t say that. And the devil is in the details in this kind of thing in any case. Maybe try asking him why the “$18 a year MFA module” available for FPBX didn’t work while the 2FA module in 3CX did, first?
I know, I was implying the sentiment.
It wasn’t that it didn’t work, it was that the OSS version of FreePBX just doesn’t have it included by default. You have to pay $18/year for it while 3CX does have it in their free version. The one thing being ignored is that the 3CX free version is 10 extensions/users. You want more than 10 extensions you are shelling out $500+/year.
Sangoma could just offer a free version of MFA and limit it to 10 users just like the free version of 3CX. Sure your OSS FreePBX install has 20 users but hey, just like with 3CX you gots to pay to have MFA for all 20 users. Actually, with 3CX you gots to pay to have 20 users regardless of MFA.
At some point, complaining about $18/year while flexing about 2800 extensions over three government accounts sounds a bit petty and cheap. I mean $18/year to provide added MFA security to your system of 500+ users seems like a sweet deal.
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Again, MFA is in FreePBX but you have to pay for it. 2FA is in 3CX, if you have 10 or less users you get it for free on the system. If you have more than 10 users you’re paying for it because you have to pay for 3CX over 10 users and for voice channels on the system.
So I guess the question is “How quickly can we make MFA free for just 10 users like 3CX?”
I seem to remember that this was about chan_spy. If you only have 10 users, how likely is it that:
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anyone would benefit from abusing it;
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anyone would want to abuse it.
When doing loss leader free versions, businesses typically don’t include the features that only bigger organisations will use. The more something is going to be essential for larger users, but not useful to those too small to justify the cost of billing them, the more it is likely to be a paid option.
Is it an add-on cost to PBXact? Wouldn’t someone want the surety of vendor backstopping if they were selling to government?