The Beginning of the End for CE

Even since I came back from Trixbox Live event in LA in last Jun, I haven't seen very active improvement on the CE or PRO product. When HUD3 delayed so many months and no longer have an expected release date, I could feel the TB development has paused for whatever reason. With Kerry leaving the community, I have to hope TB CE is not going to die. Anyway, many thanks to Kerry for his hard work to keeping up this CE community in the past couple years. Hope you can find a better place to go and achieve your new goal shortly.

same thing here.. im choosing trixbox ce over elastix. hoepfully, this is something we can still build on in the future.

Is any of this a surprise?!

I saw this coming as soon as Fonality took over Trixbox. I don't blame Fonality. They are simply not a Open Source, open community oriented company. No matter what they say to the contrary.

Other distros available include:
Elastix
PBX in a Flash
AsteriskNOW
Druid OSE

There are many others and all will have politics involved as that is sort of how the open source world can tend to get. If you want to avoid politics you can always make your own brew of the components:
Asterisk
LibPRI
FreePBX
Zaptel/Dahdi

Well I think adabbas sums it up...

"I’ve looked around many times searching for an alternative before I commit to use trixbox in my 1st IPBPX installation, and each search I do ends with the same conclusion trixbox is the most reliable professional feature-rich free IPPBX out there… or maybe I like green theme way too much :)"

I can tell by the 100s of thousands of trixbox installs that many people feel this way. Of course many people don't bother to post to the user forum unless they have a problem. So building a simple reliable systems inevitably leads to less posts. But there are still plenty of people who stop by to post a success they had with a customer. Or how they hooked up a trixbox to a strange piece of legacy equipment.

As for the future of trixbox we are moving forward and will continue to provide quality products for free. Don't let a few negative posters get you down.

It has been a pleasure having Kerry here. Now that he's gone I guess I'm leaving too, probably moving on to pbx in a flash.
Good luck to all

Andrew here in lies the problem, Kerry seems to have been the only person that communicates with the community. While I appreciate the comments of bubbapcguy, I'm one of the "dummies" asking stupid questions. This is why we have purchased a support agreement with Fonality but as stated earlier even that is getting harder to get contact with the CE guys now.

But is saying this you also have to understand our concerns regarding the CE project. In the last little while we have seen little change and the promise of Hud3 "Forever". Our company has been embarrassed a number of times by dates that have been floated by Fonality team, in one for or another and have been retracted.

What are we supposed to think?

Yeah 255, never ever promise things that aren't available yet. It doesn't matter what product or company it is. You have no control over that.

Props to Trixbox. It doesn't solve all my telephony problems but it provides a lot of solutions that I like and want to continue with.

yes i agree - 99% of poeple in here are freeloaders, who think opensource is free. opensource refers to the type of code , ie it is open and peole can modify enhance etc etc baecause they have the code.. opensource does not mean free as in money . ultimatley somebody has to pay for development , somebody has to Pay !

i agree all the dead beats can go and all the contributors can stay .. laugh what an ideal world this would be !

i think that TB should not be free i think that TB iso should cost $20 per download !
it would lead to more stable code , more support and a greater appreciation of the community . the $20 raise should goto Fonality and pay for guys like Kerry and Tim and all the others . a honesty or a donation system just doesnt work .
hey im not an Andrew/Fonality Fanboy, but somebody has to administer the projcet , that person (or company) needs an income .

I think pbx in a flash tried something likr this, hold hostage updates or something you had to pay for but I dont think it went over well. I think PIAF also tried $5 downloads that may have been better. Unfortunately you dont get in open source to get rich, there are a lucky few who do but thats not the norm. Linus the father of Linux still has a day job. GPL usually means free as in freedom and free as in beer. But nothing says it can not be sold. It is a thin line you ride. Redhat charges 10 grand but there is alot more than software that comes with that. Unfortunately trixbox says $20 an ISO now they get slammed with what are you giving to XYZ project and trixbox is made with a few dozen projects and is comprised of hundreds more.

Those of us that are legitimate donate time and money back to the projects.

The problem is all of the scam artists that take everything they can and do a lousy job of supporting their customers. I clean up after them every day. They also don't give a penny back to the project.

Ethan Schroeder busted his a** writing a bunch of awesome applications for the Aastra phones and he got stiffed by enough folks he had to stop. He was too much a gentleman to name them in public, I would not have hesitated.

Maybe Obama will bail out open source too (just kidding).

One other point while I am ranting. trixbox CE drives revenue to trixbox Pro. That forms the budget for the CE team. Even with the head count down to 2 it is still expensive to run the project.

Hello Alan!

Thank you for speaking such nice words of me. I really did enjoy helping you.
One thing about doing support, you tend to get relationships in a sense where your working with the customers everyday.

I have also stepped down from fonality. I have moved on to start my own company in a different field.
I respect fonality and the opportunity they have given me to have been able to work out so many random issues every day in my daily duties.

I will miss the staff the most. Everyone there is a charactor and is driven in their own way, to build/create, resolve, troubleshoot,help different ways positively for the customers.
This is why I loved working there. Guys we will always have "wheres indy week" ;)
I am just at point in my life where I have to move away from the telephone. It was a good journey and I'm glad where it took me.

Peace
Kindest Regards
Christopher B
former ce support man

------------------------------------------------------------------

"not all phones were created equal"
evan doorbell http://phonetrips.org

-
My new company:
http://myspace.com/cannabisdelivery

*******************************************
DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A PERSONAL RANT AND IN NO
WAY REPRESENTS THE OPINION OR POINT OF VIEW
OF ANY OF THE FOLKS WHO PAY MY BILLS AND THE
OPINIONS CONTAINED WITHIN MAY OR MAY NOT
REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF ME MYSELF OR I COLLECTIVELY
*******************************************

I started http://trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/open-discussion/lets-do a year ago and it did better then I imagined though I never got my t-shirt. Anyhow It has been sticky at the top of open discussion since a day or two after I wrote it up but you will note only 48 post and most of those who gave are the ones who do give back. Unfortunately the hardest thing in the world is to get people to pay for a free product. We have tried a few one day drives but they have not gone well and we have even discussed a software install fee to be given to the respective installed project but no one wants to pay for free software. So what is the trick well often unless your a billionaire like Mark Shuttleworth you let a project go and let the community put their money where their mouth is. Chris could probably only dream to have Shuttleworth's money but he still employs people to work on trixbox. People do complain allot about time lines, release dates and so forth with trixbox which is free but amaizingly you don't see half these complaints for Microsoft and you pay them (at least if you are legal) Imagine this. I want you to do a $1000 worth of development I need it by tomorrow and here is the kicker, I am not going to pay you a dime. Wait that's not the kicker the kicker is I am going to ride you like a mule kick you and smear your name like peanut butter on toast until you do it my way. I am a big fan of killing all the people on the "payroll" and letting the community as a hole take the code develop it and rework it and make trixbox the best distro in the world but the problem is if it is left to the community what will happen, will it die? as we have seen people aren't gung ho about giving back, allot who were left for one reason or another. I know allot of folks left simply because of all the drama and bickering like a bunch of school kids. I would like to believe we are ALL better than that. Here is the deal you want something done Ask and it may or may not happen. If you want something done on a timeline ask with cash. If you want something done now ask how much cash do you need to make this happen. The person who finances a project controls it. So if it is a guy in his basement you will get it his way, In regards to trixbox its fonality so it is their way. If you want trixbox to go some other way become the boss and finance it.

Dear CE Community:

Hello everyone, my name is David Kullmann and I am the Technical Support Manager for tribox CE, PBXtra, and trixbox Pro Level 2 teams.

I want to thank all of you who have worked with our support staff. It has been a pleasure watching our relationship develop and being able to provide support for the CE community. Each of you are what makes this project possible!

CE support volume is on the upward slope. Since Quarter 1 of 2008, CE support has grown and continues to grow at a very high rate:

In Quarter 2, CE support volume grew by almost 1/3rd (28%).
In Quarter 3, CE support volume grew by over half it's previous volume (54%!)
In Quarter 4, CE support volume grew another almost 1/4th (24%).

What does this mean? This means you may have to wait an extra minute on hold when you are calling into CE support because our team is working very hard to meet our communities demands, not because it is the end of CE. We have been doing our best for you, and we will continue to work hard for you in 2009.

Once again, I thank everyone for the support through generating buzz (forum postings, word of mouth), community contributions, and the great support customers we have had the pleasure to work with so far!

David Kullmann
Fonality, Inc.

Duddde...
My new company:
http://myspace.com/cannabisdelivery cannabis delivery.....Dude...Dude...Dude...

VoIP tech to pot dealer not a big leap.... He is still dealing with dope heads.....

I am responding to andrew and bubba's post from about halfway.

I used to actively respond and help out daily in the forums, I do not respond daily - usually 1-5 posts a month.

It seems that the users posting are mainly people who fail to search and find what they need OR are venting. Both are OK, but I do not have the time to get involved with either.

Trixbox has been a great opportunity for all. I wrote a rant, one of my few, in response to some people complaining about 2.6.2.1 or the release ( I dont remember, hit my username and youll find it).

I make money (Not my living) supporting Trixbox. Most of my customers are people who try it, and screw up - and like Scott, I come in and clean it up - sometimes just formatting and building it correctly. My customers build from the forums, and word of mouth - the time I have to support Trixbox is usually booked.

To those of you who are Switching camps, I say good riddance. Some of you clog the forum with Junk, write back un-thoughful responses, make un-researched claims, and in general are pains in the asses (We know who I am talking about). Go, be in peace.

You will NOT find an EASY to deploy FREE phone system with a NICE POLISHED look, INTEGRATED FEATURES, a large community of pre-posted answers, (and if you have a legitimate new question someone will help out fast).

For transparency, I am a member of PBIAF forum, have tried the release, and have stuck with trixbox.

Just so everyone knows, I am 23, I have been working with Asterisk since I was working in a corporate IT office in NYC during my college (18-21). AAH, Trixbox 1, 2, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6 - HUGE LEAPS.

I have recently enacted a policy to contribute 5% of my Paypal earned income to Trixbox. I have 3 payments I am waiting for, and will promptly send donations. 5% is a a small amount, that will hopefully add up.

I'm still here, and I am staying.

JCHUBY

hey TB is not church , it is a business and needs to make money . charge for downloads = money to pay wages.
if you dont want it then dont pay , and dont download.
forget the donation system , i presonally have 4 projcets on source forge , and each has had lots and lots of downloads , but $0 donations , each project cost my company (me) personaly $1000 to develop because i pay a developer to write the code . there is no future in a projcet that has no contributors , people have obviousy shown that they dont want to donate ....so make them pay.

FREE does not pay the bills

I would hope this kind of discussion puts pressure on Fonality to fully open source its development of CE. A number of other projects do this successfully - and it will help to significantly improve community image and product stability while reducing cost. While TB CE is technically "open source" in legal definition, it is NOT in the spirit of how many of us view open source - with the community itself actively making design, code, and release decisions.

Virtually ALL of the design and code decisions come out of Fonality, with varying levels of transparency. Of course, with that kind of a commercial development mentality, CE will suffer as Fonality suffers in the bad economy.

Digium, FreePBX, MySQL, and a whole host of other major open source ventures are significantly more open to community development than is Trixbox. From a business model perspective, fully open sourcing and encouraging community development of the product would reduce hard costs to Fonality, and allow them to package up community-developed features into TB Pro or premium commercial support.

What say ye, Fonality?

right there with ya Kodak - the beginning of the end was a long time ago. at some point last year I lost all desire to contribute here. both the creators and many of the users have made some detrimental mistakes that have done nothing but reverse progress.

Unfortunately I have yet to find anything that looks as cohesive, professional and thorough as trixbox. Yet more unfortunate is the fact that there are some serious organization problems in the background, and a huge lack of trust to let the community have any real hand in the project.

What- is fonality afraid someone will see what trixbox is made of if they open development - fyi since its open source anyone can obviously see what its made of. Or is fonality afraid that the community would develop a true competitor for PRO? -What if community development actually contributed to PRO - now wouldnt that be a turn of the tables!

The whole charge per download thing wouldnt be a bad idea even if it were $1-2 - at 1 million downloads - would that be enough to fund proper inhouse development?

1 million downloads , that must be since it started not on every release .. i think that a lot of poeple dont UPDATE there box with every release.. i know that i dont . i firewall it inside for lan , and get it stable . i dont upgrade unless there is a really good reason . but yes i do download and play with the latest release. so a pay per download would be a good idea , and the money would have to be divided between the comunity and fonality . you are correct about trust there is a trust issue with fonality. but a surely a very small group of people made up from fonality + community would solve this probelm and they could distrubute (or at least have a say in the distrubution of funds) i think raising money and directly funding TB would have a possitive community outcome . funding would pay for development or (via the bounty system) reward developers that are contributing . funding woud provide a much better TB paid support service that could (like kerry and tim did) contribute to the forums which are free .

yes i would be among the 1st to contribute to a paid iso download system. i see it as fair because everybody who uses TB pays for the download and i see it as transperant because because we can all see how many downloads and how much money is in the piggy bank. i think people would view the community differenty and if i were Andrew or Fonality i would probably also see it diferently (since i would be making some real money for my efforts).

“think about what I said a few times”… That exactly is what makes this project web interface very attractive. Most of us do not have the time to “think about it few times” :)

We have many other things to do and Learn… For example I am a CCVP, CCDP, CCNA , JNCIA and took MCSE and RHCE courses. I am not a program and will never will… I am originally an Electrical Engineer that found a Job as an IT administrator and later got the chance to do an MBA.
I can do marketing, presales, design, implementation, operation and optimization but will never ever do coding the same way I will never ever do cabling. Although I did both at some point on my life, but I did find myself in either.

When starting a project for an SMB I have many other things to think about like Routing using Vyatta, Linksys, Cisco or Juniper, Wireless using DD-WRT or Cisco, Switching (POE or not POE, Gigabit or not Gigabit)… DNS open source or windows, Email hosted or internal, Windows Domain or not and for what purpose, Backup solution and finally to offer them an IP-PBX or not.

I do not have the time to learn every CLI, there are things that I already now like Cisco, and there are things that were very easy to learn like Juniper and Vyatta as the commands are very similar but in a way different… Even if I have the ability to learn Asterisk then that will not be my main priority, and taking the code from a project to be used in another is way out of my league at the moment… after all I am doing this as freelancing in addition to my main job.

On another subject, I like the idea of paying for trixbox; but I would to make a point that not each download is a “download” for example I downloaded 2.2 long time ago and tested briefly at home… I have a Box now using 2.6.2 to start really learning, I did not made any money out of those hence I will find myself very reluctant to pay for them (or even download them if there was a charge).

However, when I finish my 1st install in the coming few weeks I will be more than happy to donate a %. If there is a rule or an agreement of paying certain amount of money per commercial install I would easily add it to what I charge my future customers, I would not cheat because I will be willing to do what is reasonable to support the source of my money.

Asking people to pay for trying it (download it) will result in less people trying it, and less people liking and consequently less people supporting it.

I have to agree with some of the comments from adabbas. I think there are many people on this forum whose background is IT (Microsoft) and/or Network (Cisco/Juniper). These people are reluctant to get too engrossed into the Asterisk CLI & Config files. I certainly fall into this category. The beauty of Trixbox & FreePBX (politics aside) is that they offer an easy install ISO & user-friendly GUI to get an Asterisk box up running and actually doing real work.

Adabbas,
You don't care about the stability of the phone system you're going to install for your clients? Once in the asterisk cli it's not that hard to type "help" to see what you're looking for. You are providing a phone system to a client and the client expects that you'd be able to support that system no matter what happens. Your clients also expect their system to be up and running 24/7. Downtime isn't an option. What if something happens in centos that needs troubleshooting, as Scott mentioned??
So again, is it really worth it to deploy an unreliable system? Or would you take the 5 minutes to print out a quick reference guide for a more reliable system?

Yes ja133,

I have to agree with you; reliability and stability is very important, that is why I always have backup planes if things go wrong I can easily use them :) Anyway trixbox should be both stable and reliable when running (until applying a new update).

One of the advantages of virtualization is the ability to take a snapshot or even a complete clone of the virtual machine (PBX) before (and after) any update or major change in configuration, if things go wrong it is very easy to revert back in seconds; that exactly why my management in my daily job was very excited to convert all our 72 systems into virtual machines.

Anyway and even if you do not like or use virtualization, as many have pointed out in this forum, there are many tools to image the hard drive of a physical machine (some while it is running).

I would love to be a professional in everything I do, but I came to a conclusion few months ago that I cannot learn the details of everything I use. My knowledge and skills will go with time and exposure, by dealing with problems when/if they arise. But I will do my but to avoid venturing in unfamiliar lands often (at least not on productions boxes).

Keep in mind that the market I am targeting could be very different that yours. When I offer trixbox to a client it is usually a 5 to 25 employees-SMB looking for a cheap PBX that provides them the features of a more expensive enterprise PBX. In this market segment, reliability and stability are more relaxed terms and the level of the support they expect is proportional to what they pay to have (not much). I do not install trixbox for living, I do it in my extra time so I know that my opinions do not apply to everybody but I am sure that it applies to many.

And whoever does this needs to get books on how to use Moodle!

@mjoyner: I totally agree. This exactly is what is needed. I live across the world, and would not travel to the US to attend classes. But I would be the 1st to dedicate some of my after-hours time to view a CBT about something that I am interested in.

@SkykingOH: To be honest I also agree with you.

But in my (and others like me) defiance I can only say the following:
I have to start somewhere, and I am starting with trixbox by offering my clients (who are so far my friends who own SMBs) a new PBX for cheap. It is cheap because they know that I am learning trixbox through them (I made that very clear), and it is cheap because they are my close friends and I would have done it for free if they’ve asked (and I had the time).

Most of those SMBs would not pay 20% less than a Cisco alternative. Actually my friend has contacted me because he knows I am a CCVP with experience applying IP telephony solution in a major Airline, but when I’ve gave him the price estimates of a Cisco solution he said “I only need a PBX, not a small island”. His other alternatives were keeping his old Panasonic PBX that he bought long time ago for 500$ or asking me to get him something like the Linksys SPA9000 for 300$+ (but that only supports 16 extension, a phone for each group of employees instead of a phone for each person may also do).

Still, after knowing the amount of time/efforts it takes I agree with you; the amount I’ve asked for (20% of what a professional Open Source telephony integrator has asked) is way too low for what is involved. And I will probably not do it again until I’ve learned enough to justify asking for such high charges (unless another good friend asks me :))

PS I live in a country where almost all normal citizens and SMBs still use pirated Windows, hear about Linux rarely and cannot offered paying for Cisco’s products.

PPS I learned a lot from reading your posts about running cabling through electrical lines and the merits of using VLANS (followed the 1st and will do the 2nd)

I just got a quote from a local company that sells nortel and avaya , haven't checked cisco lately. The quick quote I got for a Nortel system was right at $30k , they said avaya would be way too expensive and nortel was the cheaper way to go.
If I do the install myself and buy a year of CE support my total cost would be just over $7k using a dell rack server and polycom phones.
By your logic a good trixbox reseller should make $17k for the install of my system. BTW, there would be no cabling involved my site has gigabit everywhere already.

I don't have much experience outside the US. I worked for a year on a project in Latin America however it was for a wireless carrier so money was not an issue?

I think that Open Source Telephony is very powerful for emerging nations and brings access to technologies that are economically out of reach. What country are you in?

Certainly a CCVP would know all about VLAN's and CDP - far more than my little discussion. Not sure I remember my electrical line comment, please remind me.

It's not an attack, I am trying to understand what you got quoted for 30k. For 25 extensions a good reseller should be able to see 4-5k in services with a 10% margin on the hardware. Add another $1000.00 to configure the PoE switch and networking.

My opinion on running the system in house is to allocate a percentage of your budget to professional services. Spend $1500-2000 on getting a Pro to set it up for you, then allocate another $2000.00 for training. You would still have a 50% savings over the Nortel solution. I would also advise keeping an onsite spare for everything if you are going to support it yourself.

Dear Skyking,

Although I have a B.Sc in Electrical Engineering (but never practiced it) the 1st time I’ve got a hit about the effects of running network cables near electrical wiring was by reading an old post by you ( I did scan the forums and read almost everything I managed to understand before deciding to suggest trixbox for my friend). Your post made me search the Internet for other issues especially the safe distance between both wiring; hence my friend now has an office with cabling according to standards which is an odd around here. His electrician was going to run both cables through the same trunks, the way it is done around here in Jordan.

As I used to say; “You will be surprised how little CCVP has to do with IP phones … It is not the focus of any of the five exams; you get to learn something about them in the CIPT exam, but not enough to get you going in the field for sure, and it is not an objective of the exam”. That naturally applies to Voice VLANs. Sadilkhov forums have a post by me pinned with the title “How To Do Your Ccvp - From Start To End, Plz Read this before asking questions” so I sure sympathies with you people that try to answer silly questions that have been answered many times already, and that is why I’ve read a “trixbox made easy”, currently reading “trixbox without tears” while applying it at home, and will not start my real install before reading the SureTeQ guide.

Anyway to rephrase my statement: I knew about VLANs since 6 years when I did my CCNA and we use them at work to segment large broadcast domains, however I never understood why they’v could really beneficial or “needed” in an SMB VOIP installation until I read your posts (the the Cisco documentation you’ve linked, I always thought that QoS should take care of voice without the need of another LAN or VLAN.

Reading, Learning and becoming Certified is great, however it is only completed by experience. I do my reading before I come asking in the forums for your experience (until I build my own and start help others). I do this to make it easier for myself to understand and for others to help me.

One last thing, I think that your electrical line comments was about somebody running an Ethernet cable to his kitchen using CAT3 (or maybe they are two different posts, I cannot remember exactly).

I have looked at, installed, and played with almost every distribution. But I picked TB because of the
things I haveseen in these forums. Things I read from Andrew, SkyKing
to name two, have helped me on the home PBX project, and in addition I am impressed with the
number of commercial deployments of CE. If you are a SMB, in many cases a Cisco, Avaya, Nortel
is way out in the $40K range. But paying someone to deploy a stable version of CE Pro, and hooking
yourself up with support sounds like a good way to make money, serve the development and may
make the difference between affordable and not for some SMB's. So you are really providing them a
needed service. It is clear there are some fairly large deployments of CE out there, and engineers doing this
full time, some part time are spending their time here helping others. It is TB that seems to provide the ability
to have stable enough code, a support forum of very experienced engineers, and professional service offerings,
that I suspect anyone deploying TB for a company is advising support is a must.

I don't see this with Asterisk, asterisknow, or the other Distro's. For me, I can't afford much with 2
in college and this economy. In fact going to CE will bring my current 4 verizon Pots line costs down by $200/mo
which is PART of my motivation. The other is of course VOIP, and it is all the things I love.
I just think TB has something special here. Newbies can turn in to pro's and help pay back
down the road. I am not afraid of some work. But this forum of skilled people is a differentiator.

Humble regards and many thanks! When I am up and running, indeed I will donate. I believe in
also paying for Freeware, and Shareware when it is something you really use day to day....
(How many have an IP calc that is freeware and kicked in $5 or so?) There are those that
do, but not enough. I don't think they will survive on donations. But if I can get this under my
belt, and kick off a few SMB's I know eventually with Support purchase annually, I hope it
will help.

Many thanks again
defilm

Plans never go the way we want them to.
Thanks for all your hard work.

.....but how do you explain that to the (SMB) customer?

I am a big fan of both Trixbox CE & FreePBX and I've read many of the posts about Trixbox forking FreePBX. However, there is point that I'd like to make that I haven't read anywhere else - Trixbox removed the word "Free" from all the GUI pages.

Suppose you are going to an SMB customer for a demo & try to sell them a quality phone system. Or perhaps you have already sold them a (Asterisk) phone system and you add a new extension in front of them, the last thing you want is the word "Free" plastered all over the GUI page.

Don't forget many customers are not familiar with the word "Asterisk" and Trixbox" - but they are all familiar with the word "Free".

OK, so you can explain to the customer that they are paying for the Installation & Integration of the "Free" software. But with Trixbox, you don't need to get involved in that discussion, because the word "Free" is nowhere to be seen on the GUI.

OK, with some Linux/PHP skills you can blank out the "Free" logo/text yourself (on FreePBX), but why go to that trouble if trixbox is already available.

On the other side of the fence... SkykingOH wrote:

"What Fonality needs to do is to maintain the repo in a state that you can update components with a reasonable assurance of them working"

The recent problem with trixbox package manager not working on v2.6.2.1 is a classic example of this. Also, the fact that the tb-backup module not being available in the stable repo is another example.

The trixbox team need to improve on communications....

Some of these critical problems should be highlighted by e-mail alerts. I received an e-mail alert today advertising 20% off the ftocc training event in Miami. Fine. But I wish I could receive e-mail alerts if there is a critical problem with the Repo, or if there is a root exploit/vulnerability with the tbm-gui.

I just called the helpdesk and spoke to Charles, have to say got through - no problem and got fast and great help! (Very Impressed)

Andrew, what I or We need you to understand is we dont want TB to die, but when we dont hear any communications or updates, we get concerned. Especially when one of the only Fonailty employees that communicated with us (Kerry) has gone and we find this out by hearsay.

As you must know by now, the serious users of your products have no problem paying for them but how to implement that in an acceptable way to the community seems to be a bit of a mine field!

How can we as a community better communicate with Fonality? and do you think maybe there is a better way for Fonailty to communicate with us??

Alan Scott

Aric -

The fork is not the big deal, at least not to me. If features where being added to FreePBX there would be a purpose behind the fork. In the current state it's just a branding job.

Go back and read the promises Chris L. and Kerry made when the fork was done. It's about broken promises and a general lack of execution.

The good thing is memories are short. Every opportunity exists to still execute on the promises. It's only been 6 or 7 months. Blow the users away with a module that supports multiple parking lots in 1.6 or how about an improved UI in the extension page to handle large numbers of extensions. A little effort would go a long way.