Not quite. I believe it was called Asterisk@Home at the time Trixbox forked it. Before that it was called Asterisk Management Portal (AMP). I believe PBXact is also a fork of FreePBX btw.
Fair enough. I confused AsteriskNow with Asterisk@Home
You posted a link but what did you address exactly? According to Sangoma it only works on PBXact now unless I got inaccurate information. Hence the name XactDialer. I don’t know the technical details exactly because there are none. It’s a commercial module. If you go to Module Admin on FreePBX 16 it’s not there.
By “weird” I mean people are complaining but I don’t hear any request. They just apparently feel something is wrong. OP doesn’t feel that FreePBX is free enough, because he has to suffer through a few ads at install time. Yeah, I think that’s weird. What do people actually want? Just an install experience with no ads? Are the ads enough to drive a complaint thread?
I have installed it on FreePBX 15. Does it not work on 16?
My issues go far deeper than a few ads popping up. It all started with sysadmin and module signatures. Surely you can see that the entire project is slowly creeping towards full commercialization. It’s really just a hybrid now.
So you are saying it all started pre-Sangoma. This all existed before Sangoma bought Schmooze. All commercial aspects where introduced before Sangoma got it. So how is this something Sangoma did?
C’mon, we’ve beaten that horse to death. Module INTEGRITY VALIDATION was 100% open and 100% free, with full documentation on how anyone could do it.
Here - let me help you: Sangoma Documentation
Sysadmin was always a bit of an oddfellow. People wanted a GUI to manage their network interfaces, and other system specific stuff, and were willing to pay a small amount of money to have it built into FreePBX. That’s it - and was many MANY years before Module Integrity Validation.
But c’mon. Give up on beating on module integrity validation - I REALLY went into battle to get that approved, and I went out ot my way to NOT limit it and to make sure all of the tools and documentation were right there in front of everyone who could possibly want it.
I even agreed (admittedly, later) that people wanted a way to do it without needing to get Sangoma installed, so Sangoma Documentation emerged.
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The beauty of free software is you are free to use something else. If you don’t see that the combination of free and commercial modules is a feature not a bug…well…read my first sentence again.
Not engaging further until my request stated above is satisfied, but I will point out (again!) that the XactDialer (or Broadcast) commercial module is supported on both FreePBX and PBXact in all current versions including 16.
@shomi
Everything about FPBX is becoming more and more commercial as far as I can tell.
For at least the last 5 years, I have seen nothing move from “Free” to commercial (using FreePBX 12, 13, 14, 15)
Some modules are only available for PBXact now like Xact Dialer. I could be wrong but I believe previous versions of that, whatever it was called, worked on FPBX.
This continues to work with FreePBX and has always been a commercial module as long as I have been here. The price hasn’t even changed.
I have a feeling there will be more and more of that happening with other modules.
Again, I have not seen a single module change from “Free” to commercial since I have been here. In fact I’ve seen the opposite as community modules have been added. “Free” functionality in the GUI has only increased.
To me it appears that Sangoma is trying to add new features, spending development time and money to build on top of the FreePBX base. Assuming the goal is to make money/stay in business to continue the work, how would you suggest they do it? I personally like not being charged for something unless I specifically need it.
@shomi as Sangoma’s commercial viability is critical to the health of the FreePBX and Asterisk projects, how would you run the business? What would you recommend?
Lorne
Example off the top of my head I noticed a few months ago was Oracle PMS connector can only be bought for PBXact. It does not existing for FreePBX.
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Thanks Tony for that reminder. Yes, this is correct the Oracle connector for Property Management is PBXact only at this time. Property Management itself is available on both platforms.
My bad. I see now that it’s actually called “Broadcast” in the GUI even though all the licensing info calls it XACT Dialer. That is why I couldn’t find it before.
Developers have certainly voted as evidenced by the lack of 3rd party modules. I think the introduction of the signature system had a lot to do with that. I would love to do some stuff with the API but I don’t trust this project to not cut me off at the knees when it is in their best business interests to do so. Looks like the commercial Sangoma Realtime API module may be an example of that happening already.
Again, state what you want.
If you have such distrust in a project why would you use it for what is typically a critical application?
Thank you for your concern. The API’s and SDKs are getting so feature rich, standardized, and easy to use, that you don’t need to use a dedicated GUI + VoIP Engine server for most things now.
I am gradually making that transition now that it is more practical to do so. I don’t even need to know what they are using on their backend but I think a lot of them are using FreeSwitch.
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The signature system was put in to place as a result of bad actors editing things and flying under the radar. It was written and put in to place by @xrobau who was the original unpaid creator of FreePBX and who is adamantly open source. It was also put in place pre-sangoma.
As stated above you can self sign or even get your key signed to develop modules. There has been some drama with my companies 3rd party modules but that has more to do with who we are than the modules themselves. Ultimately you can remove the signature system like PBX In a flash did if that is your desire. It is open source. The only thing they might and really can come at you for is trademark stuff or if you remove copyright stuff which is required as part of licensing. If you comply with the license they really cant do anything (IANAL)
They may get uppity if you create a competing product but again if it complies with the license there should be no issue.
Let’s understand this a bit better. A lot of third party modules were about hooking into Asterisk functionality. Things that FreePBX didn’t offer or they where offering a non-commercial way (OSS Endpoint Manager) to do things. Many of these third party modules didn’t just work with FreePBX but other Asterisk based systems.
Asterisk v12 changed that landscape. Things that those developers based their solution on where overhauled, Chan_PJSIP was introduced, things like MeetMe and Monitor saw less development because they had been replaced by more current options. Because Asterisk started to change how it did things and was introducing new functionality such as a more advanced SIP driver, this meant they had to do a lot of work to keep up. Many just threw their hands in the air and stopped doing things on it. Or in the case of projects like A2Billing, they gave up on it, let it sit for the community and only focused on their commercial version of it.
I’m now sure what this means. You’re transition to what that is more practical? Who is “they/them” and what makes you think they are using FreeSwitch and why does that even matter?
I do love, though, how this is following the classic template. We’ve entered stage 4 of this conversation now.
Stage 1: Claim FreePBX is no longer OSS
Stage 2: Claim FreePBX will be commercial only in the future
Stage 3: Make unsubstantiated claims about the project then have them all shot down.
Stage 4: Announce that you can do it better and that you are doing so.
Generally, at this point there is only one stage left. Stage 5 is where they realize that a project like this is actually pretty f’ing hard to do, give up and sulk off into the shadows to never be seen again.
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Back in the day someone told us they were going to re-write the whole thing in ruby-on-rails and it should take them less than a week
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