I am considering offering FreePBX hosting services. I want to know whether this can be done or I need to have special authorization from the software creators before start doing it.
My intention is to offer the server(s) pre-loaded with the latest stock version of FreePBX and basically make money out of the server resources used (CPU, bandwidth etc). I read the ToS that do not permit software modification however I am not interested in doing any modification anyway. The customers will be managing the servers and it will up to them what to do, which sip provider to use and possibly get a support contract from Schmooze if they need it.
Will this be OK?
Your feedback is much appreciated.
Thank you.
FreePBX® is a registered trademark. If you would like to discuss with us a Custom Licensing Agreement, that allows proper use of the FreePBX trademark, then please contact us.
Thank you for your email. I am aware of trademark registration. I am not interested in modifying anything in order to claim it as “my product”. Of course not and this is exactly why I mentioned that stock version will be installed in the servers. Of course in a website that will be adverting this hosting service your Trademark should be there in order to indicate which software will be installed in the rented server and obviously all trademark owners will be properly/respectively mentioned. In any case I will not be making money out of your product but only out of my rented server/bandwidth resources.
Does this require special permission and hence fees payable to your company? If yes, then it might not be a viable business scenario to start with.
Please advise briefly here as others might benefit from this post as well. Depending on your answer I will consider my options and possibly get in touch.
@Preston,
Take this page http://www.rentpbx.com/ as an example. Is a license required? If so, and the details are not proprietary, could you please state whether it’s per site, per server, or per user, and give sample pricing?
Much more of an issue, is that you are likely to need permission from your government and regulatory bodies. That seems to be the main reason that most people have dropped out of the market that you are trying to enter; the regulatory burden is too high.
Also, this is a forum for the open source community, and is not the best place to get definitive answers on licensing. The open source parts are GPL licensed, so commercial use is permitted, from a copyright point of view. It’s standard GPL, so service only access doesn’t even trigger the obligation to provide source code, on request.
There are parts of FreePBX with commercial licences, but some of those just restrict access to the source code. There are technical enforcement measures for enforcing limits on numbers of users.