I don’t see where al a cart (doesn’t that word only apply to food?) really comes in to this. I don’t dispute that getting seperate things as a bundle will normally give a discount over buying them seperarely, similar to how paying for a service yearly will often have a discount over paying month by month. But this thread is about PBXact, where both the appliance and the ISO recieve the same included features/included modules - you can’t buy PBXact and then add either some seperate modules or a bundle of them later, as PBXact in itself includes them. So it is different.
If I buy an appliance, I do indeed get things bundled at a discounted rate. But if I buy the ISO for IDENTICAL software which already has exactly the same included modules as the appliance, and there are no differences in support, then why is there a difference? Why am I paying more for the exact same software which both as an ISO or as an appliance, is a bundle, which is the whole point in PBXact
Truly, if you want this question answered the only ones who can provide the “truth” is Sangoma. This is not meant to diminish your ability to post in a community forum (and it hasn’t), but there is no recourse here because we are not in a position to be able to answer your question with anything but conjecture.
But maybe you are not looking for an answer? Is this just to vent/air a grievance? If this is case, I think that is okay too, but it could be helpful for the community to identify your post as such. That would likely change the engagement as people wouldn’t be trying to “help” in the responses.
That is true, only Sangoma can answer, and I wasn’t expecting anything to change from posting here, especially as this forum overall focuses on FreePBX and isn’t properly monitored by them. As mentioned, I did ask about the pricing with the UK rep, they could have asked someone and got back to me, or passed me on to someone, if they wanted to. Sangoma had the opportunity to answer, but didn’t.
It is indeed more of a vent, but I still believe this price difference is silly, for updates only, where the only difference being where it is installed. I’d rather have the model of PBXact where I pay more upfront for a set amount of users but then the recurring cost is lower, or the choice.
Reporting dislike of the status quo will not get you anything good here, take it from one who’s been down that road a couple times to deleterious effect. This includes being the first one to report a bug that can’t be simply reproduced, disliking expensive support hours that expire, etc.
You get what you get, this isn’t a representative system.
I can feel that. The comments against my views and the likes that those comments recieve give me “we love FreePBX/Sangoma and screw anyone who disagrees” vibes. I’ve raised other criticism here before with a similar outcome. But meh, at least someone else who discovers the price discrepency and Google’s it will come across this thread, finding someone who agrees with how stupid it is
I will just end up continuing to use FreePBX but not supporting Sangoma.
I don’t think anyone not collecting a paycheck from Sangoma actually likes them. I don’t think anyone collecting a paycheck for m sangoma likes them they just won’t mention it publicly. The facts are it cost money to maintain an open source project. Sangoma bought a company that knows how to actually monetize open source then fired the guy who could do it. Sango.a hasn’t been profitable since then. As a share holder this makes me sad. At the end of the day a company who was not profitable bought a model to make them profitable, fired the brains and have hoped for the best ever since. They now put in charge the management of the failing companies they absorbed and wonder why the shareholders are not happy. This Time they got rid of bill bit the new guy is just going to put his focus on star2srar. Ultimately sangoma and open source is dead. If you want anything from them that makes sense, not going to happen. They will milkthe cow dry and move on.
Everyone in this thread sees the writing on the wall but at the end of the day they simply don’t see the value in fighting the inevitable.
An interesting perspective, thank you. Indeed maintaining a project does cost money, which is why it baffles me that there is a price difference in the way I describe. If they had the fairer pricing, were more transparent about things, allowed at least some support credits to carry over, among other things, I’d be happy to pay my share and help fund it, but I don’t morally agree with how they are handling things. They don’t seem to understand if they made improvements to how they work, they make make more money. Those decisions along with firing the guy who could monetize everything don’t seem promising. I certainly have seen that Sangoma have aquired a LOT of companies over the years too - many names I see floating around here and on Reddit that were different companies, now redirect to Sangoma.
So, you don’t see much of a future here? What do you think will happen? Sangoma will sell the company or some parts of it to someone else? They’ll just let it die off and close? Or they’ll try to hold on? Sadly sounds like a change in management is off the cards.
While reading most of these replies I see a couple that kind of hint on the core of your question, but I don’t think they adequately detailed their position.
PBXact is the commercial product with 100% support behind it, which means they put their reputation on the line with this product. They want to make sure it works reliably 100% of the time. To do this, they had their own hardware engineered and developed the software to optimize that hardware. The know how the two work together all the time.
When getting an ISO instead of their hardware, you are introducing variables into the mix, that require unique and specific to you support. as they don’t know the specific details of what hardware you may be using when you are using your own hardware. This adds additional troubleshooting and analysis efforts.
the extra time per support call, over the period of the license is added to the overall cost of the ISO versus using known hardware.
When I did some quick estimation in my head, here are the numbers I came up with.
1 support call every 2 years = 12 calls over life of 25 year license
~1 extra hour for troubleshooting unknown hardware
Support costs per hour 100-200 / Hour (Retail: Typical for industry)
Estimated extra support costs =$1,200-$2,400 over the life of the license.
Would make sense that they would include this upfront for 2 reasons.
to discourage using own hardware, it makes more sense to support their own hardware where they know what is going on.
to cover the estimated support costs upfront if they may need to.
In the end, Depending on the end users experience and level of internal troubleshooting skills, they may never need support, or they may need way more than this conservative estimate. But when offering a solution such as this, I think they may have some experience on how many supports calls they get from their commercial offerings thus far, and have averaged that out.
Sadly I do not feel your reply understands my point either.
My understanding is the bronze package includes zero support credits. No support at all. I can of course purchase additional support, but ultimately bronze is just for updates. The actual files being downloaded for the updates are identical, just like how FreePBX which is installed in hundreds of thousands if not millions of different configurations. If there was a problem then I would accept the support being potentially slightly more expensive as they have to consider hardware variables.
They are charging $45 more, or $1,375 over 25 years, with no support included, seemingly for fun.
It would be different if bronze included support credits, but this is purely for updates. I’m downloading exactly the same files from exactly the same server, appliance or ISO. That’s the issue.
to make it simple, developing the software to run on their hardware is included in the cost of the appliance. To do the extra work to make sure the software also works on other hardware (an ISO) that is of course extra cost. Also testing each update as hardare modules may be different between ISO and specialized hardware requires additional testing time to make sure the updates won’t break the ISO image. Remember specialized hardware and ISO images are NOT the exact same. One may have drivers/modules the other does not.
Some might have the perspective that this has been the problem for the last nine years. The amount of commercial development on FreePBX has outweighed the open source development in that time. Not to mention, in all honesty, the project never has positioned itself very well for outside contributions. I mean, it’s there but it’s a nightmare to deal with.
These problems with Sangoma and open source aren’t new. They’ve existed for a long time and over different management reigns. I do find it interesting that the majority of these open source complaints are directed at FreePBX while the Asterisk project seems to be running rather smoothly. Not surprising as the Asterisk project as always run smoother than FreePBX, pre and post Sangoma (for both projects).
I too see what you are saying, I agree that there will be a cost to actually supporting other hardware. For example, the appliances may run on an Intel processor, but they add support for AMD processors - there will be a cost to adding that AMD support. Whether the additional amount they are asking for is fair is another question entirely. That’s a good point.
That being said, FreePBX is ultimately being supported on probably 100,000+ hardware combinations anyway, and it is free. I could continue to operate FreePBX and Sangoma will get nothing out of me to help fund development, regardless of appliance or ISO. Because I personally consider the pricing difference unreasonable (and I know many disagree), instead of getting some money from me, they’ll get nothing. Of course others will pay and good for them. The base of PBXact is identical to FreePBX . 80% of something is better than 100% of nothing. I don’t think I’m quite wording this paragraph very well, but I think you may see what I’m getting at.
I don’t know too much about the history of FreePBX and Sangoma, other than a video about their relationship with ClearlyIP, but those problems you describe definitely don’t apply to all open source projects. Many work very very well, both those that are entirely free and those that have commercial options.
In other words, the way this is, is Sangoma’s own making, and they could do better if they wanted to. Sounds like Sangoma could do with a refreshed management all round to be honest.
Edit: This post getting locked without warning seems like Sangoma doesn’t like us criticizing them - yet another reason I won’t be giving them any money.
Almost all of the asterisk open source users are by way of FreePBX. You will note a lot FreePBX users don’t know what asterisk is. Outside of FreePBX every other solution equal in value or functionality is commercial. Sangoma wasn’t able to buy digium because they had their dicks in a row and were operating smoothly. When purchased digium was running a net loss of $4,000,000 a year. Asterisk outside of devcon has never taken much by way of general iser input in development. They also have a very stringent if you want it write it feature policy. Oh and once you do write something pre-sangoma good luck getting approved for inclusion if you were competition. You will note above outside of FreePBX everything is generally commercial and competitive with switchvox.
I have the district (dis)advantage of being in this realm almost 20 years. I have been competition, with digium and sangoma. I have also been the inside man officially and unofficially with both. I am now obviously back to a competition role but both contribute to FreePBX and I have a financial stake in Sangoma. You will note their business decision have lead me to question the sanity of maintaining that. The company hasn’t turned a profit in years.
In any case if you are aware of the history of FreePBX you will know without monetization it wouldn’t exist today and we wouldn’t have anything to complain about.
As far as outside development goes I have spent years as an outside contributor for FreePBX pre and post employment with Sangoma. As a staff developer I documented and helped simplify development. People simply have no interest in contributing. In all my time outside of myself I think I can count external major contributors on both hands and still make finger guns. Reliance on the community to maintain and develop FreePBX is a pipedream at best. The half ass job that is being done now is still better than it would be if you were depending on altruism.
I was talking about Asterisk and FreePBX as the open source projects they are and how they have been handled/managed. Digium having issues outside of Asterisk, not what I’m talking about. Sangoma making bad purchases or other issues outside of FreePBX, not what I’m talking about. I’m sure Schmooze wasn’t doing to well when it was bought either or was Schmooze the outlier and the only company bought by Sangoma that didn’t have issues?
Sigh, of course I know this. I was referring to the balance of it over open source. At some point when the monetizing becomes the driving goal and what the focus is, people start to get the opinion the open source part doesn’t really matter.
And this attitude isn’t new either. Between that and what I previously said above, it does make it so people just don’t care and not want to be a part of it.
