Who's steering the FreePBX development boat?

FreePBX Development
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LinkedIn (everyone’s most trusted source of information) told me Kapil has joined the venerable team of ClearlyIP.

Who’s the new lead software engineer for FreePBX?

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Who’s steering the FreePBX development boat?

The steady hands at Sangoma continue to be the primary stewards of the FreePBX project. :ship:

Tango the frog, our beloved FreePBX mascot since 2009. :frog:

Seriously though, not sure about that particular title you mentioned being an actual recently used hat worn by anyone… but there’s lots of distributed activity in the FreePBX repositories on GitHub by many different people at Sangoma, including software engineers, quality assurance professionals, support team members, security conscious individuals, sales folks, marketing crew, management types, and more! Here’s some good recent examples of the team work making the dream work:

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You still didn’t answer who is the project lead. When Lorne left in 2024 they announced that Kapil was the new project lead for FreePBX. No one asked who is contributing, it was asked who is leading.

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There hasn’t been a sudden change in who’s steering the boat. I’ve been here throughout, and as @penguinpbx mentioned he’s been here as well. Many of the same engineers and contributors are still here and actively building and maintaining FreePBX. You know @mbrooks @jcolp @slobera @psingh @jphilip @tmilbrand @Santhosh @Atripathi @pramarajan and others.

FreePBX has never been a one man show… Over time, leaders come and go- this isn’t the first time as I’m sure you are all aware, and it probably wont be the last. What’s important to remember is that each of them built a solid team around them and those teams persist today.

So to answer the question, who is steering the ship. Nothing has changed… Chris has been pseudo (sudo) PM which should seem obvious from his leadership on security, community, and key initiatives. Like always, even before Sangoma, I remain engaged with guiding direction, strategy and working with the team to drive execution.

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Except your project lead no longer works there and you don’t have another one. The least you can do is admit that you don’t have a project lead instead of providing these vague non-answers to try and satisfy a very simple question

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I understand that may not have been the title, though I would say it was the role. Therefore I was asking who’s at the top of the engineering organization with regards to FreePBX. Kapil wrote as the leader of the engineering work behind numerous features as well as the release of FreePBX 17:

screenshot of FreePBX blog
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To be extra clear, it wasn’t meant as a vague question that sometimes appears here with hints of innuendo about the demise of the project. As a long time FreePBX user, occasional bug reporter, and occasional developer, it’s nice to have some knowledge of and relationship with the folks actually producing the open-source code we rely on. I thank Mike White for “naming some names.”

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Yes I can confirm that Kapil is working at ClearlyIP/14IP and we were thrilled to welcome him along with lots of other ex Sangoma staff members the last 2 months. With the constant layoffs at Sangoma, I think you will see plenty more to come.

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There goes the “community” again… Some things never change.

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You may find a few others in our public sangoma group list of Sangoma staff with forum accounts. And there might be more coming on board soon to help steer, per the open careers page at sangoma.com!

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Wow I am sure the 40 plus people you just laid off this month would have loved the opportunity to have moved into an open role.

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While this is or was a correct statement there has always been someone leading the whole ship. Since nobody seems to be around that remembers the history of the project I will give a brief history of people who lead the FreePBX project (steering the ship) Note the ship is a metaphor and most ships have a crew. Seems silly to have a ship for one person…

  • Rob Thomas
  • Philippe Lindheimer
  • Andrew Naggy
  • Matthew Frederickson
  • Lorne Gaetz
  • Kapil Gupta

Over the years these gentlemen were the ship captains. So what I think @billsimon was asking without a bunch of noise, who is the next person to do what all of those fine gentleman did?

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I’ve never worked at any company that publicly discussed personnel changes until after they happened. Why would anyone expect Sangoma to be any different?

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Because in the history of FreePBX, even under Sangoma, when the project lead has left the team there is an announcement (usually a forum thread too) and their successor is named. However, in this instance there was no announcement and no successor has been named. So yeah, people are curious since things that normally have been done in this scenario haven’t been done.

A simple “We haven’t appointed one yet” answer would have worked but we got a very convoluted one that sounds like they are anarcho-syndicalist commune taking turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. Where the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting…or something like that.

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Most likely because Kapil’s departure was unexpected and none of the developers working on the project have stepped up to be the designated heir.

What you are seeing is an artefact of the “commercial/community edition approach” to major Free Open Source Software projects. With 100% volunteer project nobody cares if a dev leaves for any reason. When money gets involved people start caring about what reflects on their Resume and that’s when HR departments get involved and tell everyone in the room to shut their faces about it.

Look at the squawking online that accompanied the launch of stuff like opnsense and so forth and you see what I mean. Colorful personalities! Fun times! Now it’s getting downright boring when the dirty laundry is being hidden. LOL.

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Sure, I’m sure Lorne giving his notice was unexpected too. However, either Kapil gave notice and there was two weeks of them knowing he was leaving or Kapil just walked out the door the day he quit. Either way, Kapil has been gone for almost a month now and again, if there isn’t a replacement picked yet then just communicate that instead of an extra-large serving of word salad.

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For the record all of the folks who left Sangoma on their own terms that I know including myself gave 30-60 days notice either out of courtesy or as contractually required. The only people who typically leave by surprise are those laid off.

Second note most things with FreePBX in the days of old were decided through weekly meetings. There was a project lead “steering the ship” and making sure the bean counters were happy etc but almost every decision was a discussion. When sangoma took over there were actually more hoops we had to jump through to make things officially happen. Everything major needed a business case and there were meetings and meetings. Sometimes a dev needed to go rogie to make community features happen. It is your typical corporate world.

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“help help I’m being repressed!”

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It’s interesting to see ClearlyIP folks pile on Sangoma for neglecting the open source community, while ClearlyIP itself is a privately held company that has built an entire commercial business on the back of FreePBX and Asterisk — projects they no longer contribute to in any meaningful public way.

Tony confirms he’s thrilled to be absorbing ex-Sangoma staff. Great for ClearlyIP’s headcount. But how does that help the FreePBX project? What open source commits, modules, or community infrastructure has ClearlyIP contributed lately?

James gives a nice history lesson about FreePBX ship captains — Rob Thomas, Philippe Lindheimer, Andrew Nagy, Matthew Frederickson, Lorne Gaetz, Kapil Gupta — all people who did their work inside the project. ClearlyIP poaching that talent doesn’t continue that legacy, it monetizes it.

The ‘constant layoffs at Sangoma’ criticism is fair — but Sangoma at least still employs developers actively working on FreePBX and Asterisk, maintains the repos, runs the forums, and holds the trademarks. ClearlyIP sells commercial modules, SIP trunks, and phones built on top of that foundation while contributing relatively little back.

Criticizing the people keeping the lights on while profiting from the lights being on is a bold look.

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  1. Your quoted comment does NOT link up correctly but that response was to the post above it that was marked as “Flagged by the community” which sounds nicer than “Censored by staff” What is funny is the post after is a staff member saying essentially the same words almost like a middle finger. The post was edited so it unhid it without linking the comment to it. Note both versions of that post are visible in the post history.
  2. We llke many others have some products built around Asterisk which is a telecommunications engine. There are hundreds if not thousands of products built around it. The collective team there created FreePBX and contributed much over the years to Asterisk. Below you will see Andrew and Rob getting a award from digium For their contributions. We support FreePBX users and offer them what they need but it is a very small part of our business. If you visit out site you will see our product portfolio is quite large.

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3. Sabgoma acquired Asterisk and FreePBX they didn’t create either. As seen above Asterisk was created by Digium which was acquired with the related talent pool. FreePBX Was originally called “Asterisk Management Portal” later renamed for legal reasons. It was taken from a config generator to what would become FreePBX By Rob. Rob got burned out and Philippe Lindheimer with Bandwidth took over. Bandwidth had little interest in the project and it was slowly heading to the grave. Intro Tony Lewis and Schmoozecom. He took over the project and Philippe Lindheimer moved over as well. Rob came back on and with much of the team that started Clearly we built FreePBX up to what you use today. Sangoma purchased Schmooze with FreePBX and the tallent connected. Mind you most of us have worked with tony a long time and we follow him. Nobody had to be poached. Everything I have seen tony touch turns to gold. You have a team of folks who have been a family for a very long time they stick together. What is cool is that culture is desirable. Folks who worked with tony seem to flock to him. One thing some people never seem to understand is when you take care of people whether customers or employees it builds loyalty. By the way I don’t remember the exact numbers but while tony was at sangoma the company went from something like 30 people to somewhere around 250. Some of those came along with Acquisitions he did from companies he had standing relationships with. People who were taken care of. Hell Mike White could tell you how well Tony took care of E4 back in the day. So there is no poached legacy. There is the legacy and they all moved to work with some of the best team you can work with, and me. I don’t know if working with me is a benefit or a punishment.
4. Many of my often censored criticisms, which I haven’t put anywhere here outside of using the community flagging system for censorship is done not as a competitor but as a shareholder. That’s right I am a Sangoma shareholder which means their success is potentially good for me. Let me tell you a little secret nobody seems to understand. Unified communications and VoIP is a $140 BILLION dollar industry. As a public company I can tell you Sangoma had $236 Million in sales last year. For those who like math that is 0.17% of the market. If their sales went up 1000X they still wouldn’t be our competition. We don’t want their 0.17% if the market. We should both want the other 99.83% of the market. There are billions for everyone without having to step on each other’s toes. Personally I am conflicted because I want to smash Microsoft but they pwn half the tool chain we all use. In any case the moral of this is THINK BIGGER. Imagine how much easier it would be for everyone to keep the lights on if there was a different corporate culture that took contributions and collaborated with the other small fish in the pond.

  1. The great thing about open source is if one set of lights turn off the code is still there and there is a talented team who knows how to maintain it all :slight_smile:

Side note 3rd guy in the picture is the wonderful Matt Jordan who went to work for Amazon then Google. Also not poached. Just went where it made sense for his family and career.

Side Side note There is litterally tony and myself have posted here so not “pile on” seems a bit like hyperbole.

Side Side Side note this post wasn’t attacking sangoma, It was literally asking who the face of the project is because people like to have a single point of contact to look to for official stuff. Probably stop projecting.