Sangoma is going to have to setup a Venmo account to collect all these fines
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Your snapshot does not mention what product but unless it’s FOSS then there’s another fee that just got added to the cost of decentralizing your enterprise network. And I’m betting it is NOT FOSS.
There’s NOT any kind of deep packet firewall inspection software out there that is easy to use that is FOSS and in any case, you absolutley need a central organization full of networking people who are continually patching and modifying and looking for new cracks because even if you have a deep packet inspection firewall, it’s useless without being connected to a mothership that is supplying new signatures, IP block ranges, and so on in response to the new ways crackers, phishers, spammers, etc. are constantly coming up with to break into your network.
Plus that in order to intercept HTTPS and inspect it in a firewall, you have to either mess around with the keying (distribute a fake root certificate to all clients on the network) or other MTM attack in order to decrypt the HTTPS streams, or you have to proxy everything which once more defeats the purpose of a HTTPS connection.
Yes, outage notification is easy. But in an enterprise with no WAN, with every site operating independently with it’s own Internet connection, you need to be able to intercept traffic from every client at every site in order to find clients that get broken into. Plus without a WAN that means no centralization of domain controllers which is a problem on a Windows wan.
And if you tie everything together with gateway2gateway VPNs then you end up with a centralized WAN in which case you might as well run the PBX at the central location that’s controlling all of the VPN devices. And most companies doing this are using commercial gateway2gateway VPN devices which have service contracts on them and license fees.
Companies go down the decentralized WAN road because of the cloud model, thinking it’s going to save them money. But ultimately it won’t. Ultimately by the time you add in all of the rest of the stuff you have to have, it costs the same.
I’m not telling you DON’T move your enterprise to the cloud if that is something you really really want to do. I’m telling you that unless you are a specific type of customer, it’s NOT going to really produce much in the way of cost savings. And for MANY customers it’s going to be MORE EXPENSIVE which is why “cloud repatriation” is a thing. Anyone can google up “cloud repatriation” and see dozens of articles and interviews containing explanations of why it’s more expensive that are far more extensive and through than I want to spend time with here, that shows for MANY sites cloud is a TERRIBLE idea.
Statements like “some prefer a physical server” are just implications that people saying cloud is a bad idea are just liars because they REALLY just want to secretly go into the server room and stroke their hardware, add NOTHING to the discussion.
If you have 200 extensions to manage in an office, cloud IS AWFUL. It’s not just ‘another beer’
If all extensions are not in the same office, Cloud MAY be good. But that is NOT guaranteed.
Cloud is ABSOLUTELY good FOR THE PBX DEVELOPER who from the worst case, can use it to engineer a constant revenue stream, create golden handcuffs that make it very hard for a customer to switch to a competitor who might be cheaper, and pretty much create a business where they can do very little to nothing and get paid for sleeping.
But whether or not it’s good for the customer - IT MIGHT BE. But the ENTIRE customer situation needs to be examined not just PBX on-prem vs PBX Cloud. Rushing into it just because it’s “cloud” is stupidity. And THAT is what people are concerned with, with Sangoma.
We can all see that a win/lose situation can exist with a customer buying a Sangoma cloud PBX - with Sangoma winning and the customer losing. In fact there really is no situation where Sangoma loses if they can get a customer to the cloud.
But with a customer buying a Sangoma on-prem setup, we can definitely all see a win/lose situation where the customer wins, and Sangoma loses. What if the customer gets a Sangoma on-prem setup and it works, and works well, and then the customer decides to stop paying a yearly service fee to Sangoma? The on-prem PBX contiues working, and continues working for another decade. Great for the customer, not so great for Sangoma.
People’s concern is that Sangoma may decide why bother with supporting Asterisk anymore we’ll just put our effort into the Cloud, guaranteed money, honey. And when they see Sangoma promoting Cloud and not on-prem, why is it so difficult to understand the concern?
As I see it, the customer benefits the most from a vendor like Sangoma who is willing to have a wide product portfolio and not cherry-pick. I don’t object to Sangoma picking the cloud cherries but I don’t want them to dump the on-premise stuff just because the margin on it is lower. Just because you change your company around to start manufacturing automobile winshield ice scrapers doesen’t mean you have to stop making buggy whips just because you make less money from them. You can continue making, and selling, and making money from, both.
The world does not have enough thumbs up for this statement.
And I’d add…code/patch control, possession of and control of access to your data. Microsoft et al are not forcibly pushing people onto it to generate less revenue for themselves, after all.
Getting back on point, if I manually update FreePBX modules and things go haywire, I at least have some sense of the cause. With hosted systems (aka cloud) you’re at the mercy of the low-bid outsourced help desk to flail about and do nothing while your phones don’t work.
Grafana/Prometheus, so yeah FOSS.
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Here to show my support for #FREEJAMES. As a VAR and someone who routinely works on FreePBX (we host over 40 instances for clients) I would love for Sangoma to just reiterate where it stands regarding the OSS for FreePBX. We all saw what happened to CentOS from Red Hat and what it turned into, I would like an exit strategy if Sangoma decides to do something similar.
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bump!
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Bump won’t get any response. Nobody cares what the community thinks anymore.
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Yeah, I saw it was going to get locked in a couple of weeks, and did not want that to happen, and be memory holed.
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@billsimon Hey, what steps did you do to make a v17 not lose its mind for development mode? Did you mimic the old setup?
I ordered a PBXact system for my friend’s family business, and it’s completely unusable out of the box; with now over 10 years of Linux/FreePBX/etc. experience I can’t get it to work. I came here to see about getting some help over the weekend, and my goodness am I disgusted with Sangoma. I know where I’m taking my business going forward, because CLEARLY, Sangoma has lost everything that made them valuable.
@penguinpbx isn’t responding anymore, which I assume is because they have no interest in an open, honest conversation based on the post history here.
I know that by myself I am only a snowflake in their bottom line, but together we are an avalanche.
#FREEJAMES
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Weird, sometimes this happens, and not only for Sangoma but for other brands.
I don’t want to play devil’s advocate.
You just contact support and ask to send an RMA for the replacement of the box. It should take a week.
Usually, this concerns the reseller and not Sangoma.
Why continue with a box that is messed up? I don’t see why!
For my part, if I received a product that does not work, I would then call the reseller to ask them to replace this product.
The FreePBX system works well even if it is not perfect.
Maybe the quality of Sangoma support is not up to par. But here, it seems like you received a broken box. If this were true for all boxes, I could agree with you. 
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Oh I completely understand that, but what I failed to communicate in my post is the transition from “I’m here to get help, no big deal” to “I stumbled upon this thread, am now aware of what’s going on within the company/community, and am disgusted by that”.
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I didn’t set a v17 to developer mode. I’m still developing on 16. Any issues I find when installing my module on v17, I just hack around a bit…
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Thanks for the answer. Guess that’s what I have to do too.
Yep, like me.
Just to remind everyone, @GeekBoy explained why @jfinstrom 's ban is unfounded and yet he’s still banned until the new year.
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Nor has the flagged post even been removed per even the violator’s own admission that is should of been, nor had any action taken against him for their own violations of the Code of Conduct… Hypocrisy.
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Kindergarten… 
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As a long time user of FreePBX from before the sangoma days I’ve been dreading this for a long time. I’d like to say sangoma has been good for FreePBX and the other companies it’s absorbed over the years but I’d be lying. So this just seem like the inevitable outcome. I loved Digium phones… the D40’s, 50’s, 70’s and the 65’s were my goto for a long time, still have many in the field. After sangoma aquired digium things seemed to go downhill fast. I tried P series phones on one job and ended up replacing them, at my cost, with ClearlyIP phones after being unsuccessful in getting them to stay connected and function properly. There were several support tickets opened for this issue before I gave up. I never had issue with Digium phones and never have issues with ClearlyIP phones which is all I use now.
The involvement of the FreePBX developers on this forum had historically been very positive and helpful. These forums were a great place to find solutions, get help and learn from others questions.
I’ve been too busy to pay attention to the forums much in the last year or so but I noticed some very odd replies and friction from posts involving @penguinpbx a few months ago but basically ignored them. She just seemed like yet another disagreeable person on a forum and not worth the effort. Quite honestly most of her posts didn’t even read properly, almost like English was not her primary language. Which is fine but contributed to my tendency to simply ignore them.
Now it seems I should have paid more attention. Is my understanding correct in that @penguinpbx has total authority to simply ban whoever gets her feathers (do penguins have feathers?) ruffled? One person in a community forum has this power. I guess what they say is true… absolute power corrupts… absolutely.
Seriously, who exactly is @penguinpbx to show up in the forums, decades into this endeavor and suddenly start banning… well frankly, banning legends of the community because they somehow offended her with their constructive criticism?
Seriously, I honestly have to question if she has some unresolved childhood trauma that now she feel’s the need to seek revenge with the little power she’s obtained.
What Napoleonic needs is @penguinpbx feeding by throwing out bans like beads at a Mardi-Gras parade? Perhaps some humility is in order from a newcomer and a little more respect for those who’ve been here, done that for a very long time, some since the beginning.
You seem to be responding emotionally to criticism instead of accepting it for what it is, an opportunity to correct the trajectory, which is clearly heading in the wrong direction and learn from those who have contributed more time, effort and dedication than you likely ever will to this project.
So I guess I’ll be the next one banned for “attacking” your delicate sensibilities but quite honestly, there won’t be much left to be banned from since you seem determined to get rid of all the top contributors and most knowledgeable members. You toss overboard all the best rowers and you’re boat is gonna just drift aimlessly until it sinks. Good luck with that. If Sangoma honestly feels the way it appears to about the FreePBX project, perhaps it’s time to have an adult conversation with those willing to take it over and give it the respect and attention the project needs.
@penguinpbx, I don’t know you but I’ve been on this earth long enough to know someone is not fit for a specific job when I see them do it. I’m not saying your a bad person, I just think this position is not a good fit for you an perhaps you should find some other way to contribute before the damage you are doing is irrevocable.
Or… Viva Le Fork I guess… There’s certainly enough talent being alienated here to fork the project, create free modules that compete with sangoma commercial ones and never look back.
before you hit that ban button, have a long look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly: “What is my role here? am I helping or hurting the project?”
#ClearlyForkFPBX (the hero we need right now…)
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