NEWS FLASH BIG NEWS: FreePBX 13 Support

kyle95wm

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I was wondering if we will eventually have FreePBX 13 support. I think the new version looks amazing a a lot more cleaner, but then again I was told it's still considered experimental.

Thoughts?
 

jerrm

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I think he means a FreePBX 13 based PIAF/IPBX.

A valid question. FPBX13 is not experimental at this point and FPBX 12 is effectively EOL, only receiving minimal (if any) updates.
 

henry

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Unless the FreePBX people start offering free support on these pages (very unlikely!),
for this to happen a critical mass of users has to upgrade and start using it (as a minimum).

With the trend over the last year or so pointing in the opposite direction (at least among users that frequent this forum)
I can't see how such a critical mass of users can be built...

This is why I asked by whom (it was not a smart-a$$ remark despite looking like one)...
 

kyle95wm

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So what you guys are saying is, we're not going to see FPBX 13 anytime soon for IPBX?
 

jerrm

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Unless the FreePBX people start offering free support on these pages (very unlikely!),
for this to happen a critical mass of users has to upgrade and start using it (as a minimum).

With the trend over the last year or so pointing in the opposite direction (at least among users that frequent this forum)
I can't see how such a critical mass of users can be built...
There will never be a critical mass of users at pbxinaflash.com until there is a FreeePBX 13 based PIAF.

So the question is, will there be a PIAF based on FPBX13? Again, this is a fair and valid question 7 months after FPBX13 was released.

If not, then PIAF as we know it is a dead end.
 

henry

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I can't talk for Ward, but would guess it is not very high on his priority list.
Especially now, when there are so many "clean" alternatives...
 

krzykat

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I agree, but it does beg the question ... what is the future direction of PIAF. We've always had and started with the FreePBX baseline which is now the Incredible. While we all use it and support it in PIAF, will new iterations be offered in the future or should it now be considered EOL. We also now have other options such as Elastix Incredible, though I've seen no recent advancements with it, I think one could presume that it will be continued to be supported and enhanced? And then we also have the new kid on the block, XIVO. It seems like it is garnering most of the development time and enhancements at this time. Is this so that it catches up to the other baseline products or will it be the primary focus of efforts in the future as well?
 
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henry

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Well, Ward would have to answer those strategy questions...

The way I see it, his priority number one is no black boxes, aka clean open source.
So that any problem can be tackled by anybody if desired.

The FreePBX distribution is deviating from this path.
It can be cleaned up of those boxes but it becomes harder...

Hence, why do it?
Especially if there are so many compelling alternatives.
XIVO and IPBX just to name two of them...

Henry.
 

stanjohn

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Hence, why do it?
Control and Money.
Bootstrapping open to propriety software is a very common. Think of it as the reverse of piracy, taking propriety material to free. Same reasons money and control. The arguments against are the same, both are short term gains that lead to the destruction.
 

wardmundy

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Great conversation. Let me begin by stating the obvious. We are building phone systems primarily to make phone calls. Stability, reliability, support, and feature set are the primary pieces to consider in that order. We used $200,000+ PBXs in my former organizations that were over a decade old. They now are over two decades old, and they're still humming along with a feature set that is still competitive with most commercial phone systems. We are not building self-driving vehicles where every week brings some new critical component. I still have an Asterisk 1.4 server sitting behind a firewall that works perfectly fine and does 90% of what the latest, greatest offerings provide. No, I don't use it much, but it still works reliably.

I can only speak for myself at this juncture. I fully appreciate that operating systems and versions of Asterisk, FreePBX, and other components reach end of life. Sometimes that matters. Often, it doesn't. The primary issue for me is whether I can make a backup that can be restored if a disk crashes. If there's some must-have feature that you can't live without, then go for it. Otherwise, we will strive to build reliable, OPEN SOURCE telephony solutions that can make it to the 10-year mark.

We haven't made a decision on FreePBX 13 yet. We have paid technical experts to examine how much more proprietary it is than FreePBX 12 and what it would cost to rip the proprietary crap out and transform the platform into something we all could deploy without the technical hassles that already have been documented with FreePBX 12. We have no plans to support a platform that requires encrypted components controlled solely by Sangoma and the FreePBX Development Team to function without glaring error messages. If their development methodology doesn't offend your GPL sensibilities, then jump ship now. It's not what we think open source is all about. If you don't care, that's fine, too.

Make no mistake. We think XiVO is the future Asterisk open source platform of choice. First, it's an Asterisk RealTime platform rather than a code generator like FreePBX. FreePBX under the covers is very ugly code that is difficult to support and maintain. A handful of people in the world know how it actually works. There is almost zero outside development effort with FreePBX any more. We don't want to put all our eggs in that basket. Add the layers of proprietary crap that have been added in the past few years, and you have a real mess. Second, XiVO is open source GPL3 code with no restrictions on redistribution unlike the FreePBX Distro. Third, we think it's a better mousetrap with a whole host of features that would require substantial (ongoing) financial investment in commercial, closed-source FreePBX components. Fourth, XiVO supports virtually identical PHP code as FreePBX so there is very little learning curve to migrate components to the XiVO platform. Fifth, XiVO has painless updates that are released every three weeks. They can be loaded in minutes. Sixth, XiVO makes nightly backups of your server that can be restored in minutes on ANY XiVO platform. Seventh, XiVO uses the very latest and greatest Debian 8 so it will have a fully-supported operating system for many, many years to come. Finally, XiVO has been under development for a decade. It's well supported and well funded. Reported bugs are fixed in weeks, not years.

As long as we can build an open source, GPL-compliant product with FreePBX that can be maintained easily, we will continue to do so. But we make no guarantees on how long that will be. If you don't care about proprietary and want long-term 24/7 support for your PBX, we think you should expand your horizons beyond FreePBX commercial modules. The corporate owner of the XiVO platform also offers commercial-quality implementation and support. That's what their entire company does for a living! We also will have some terrific alternatives from our 3CX platinum sponsor to announce shortly.
 
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henry

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Control and Money.
Bootstrapping open to propriety software is a very common.
Without diving into GPL licensing too deep, this is the "tivoization" problem GPL3 is suppose to solve.
As long as the code is under GPL v.2 you can get away with it. The moment it is GPL v.3 - you can't.
...Second, XiVO is open source GPL3 code .
Makes XIVO even more attractive - nobody can pull a Sangoma/FreePBX on it!
 
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wardmundy

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:rofl: The FreePBX developers have aggressively moved all of their code base to GPL3 licenses :rofl:
 

krzykat

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... Fourth, XiVO supports virtually identical PHP code as FreePBX so there is very little learning curve to migrate components to the XiVO platform.

Would this mean that even some of the newer FPBX components that we might like (long as they're source and not compiled) could be easily converted and added across? Maybe things such as the UCP or Avantfax integration (unless Xivo has a better mousetrap on faxes ... sorry havent' played with it yet).

I like what FreePBX has done and have followed it from Asterisk@Home many many years ago when I was working with Dialogic and Aculab on large phone systems and wanted to jump into VoIP. But, then came along Trix and many of us warned of the future and said the sky was falling and then it did. Then we came to PIAF and FreePBX cranked up with new blood and all was good again. Then came along Sangoma and again, many warned the sky is about to fall, and so far it has. Somewhere along that time, Elastix came into being, but I know little about their openness or direction.

I've built up what I think is a nice baseline product that does what I need and supports the needs of my clients today and for many years to come in the future if need be. But I guess we're at a cross roads as far as the future goes. Does the product, FreePBX that started so many years ago become re-incarnated yet again with open source coding that can be expanded upon by all, or does it slowly become closed and wither away??

Many of us who use this as more than a simple hobby need to have plans and make directions. The options as I see it are A) stick with FPBX and hope it goes back to its grass roots open source (I hope, but every day become more doubtful), B) jump on the Sangoma bandwagon and pay for each add-on and pray they go the direction that you want ... knowing that history has shown they have stopped (or made near impossible to use) something that was free to push a commercial item and even then told people one item on paid and then changed course, C) check out what Elastix has to offer, being that it originated from FPBX and at least appears to have more of an open model, or D) go down a new road that doesn't involve FPBX which is XIVO.

I rely heavily on the advise and opinions of @wardmundy and what he states about XIVO makes a lot of sense. Realtime has always been a questionmark for me. For a larger system it seems logical to be the way you'd go. I also have always questioned why not multi-tenant - perhaps that will also be in the offering - which would really get me excited. But whichever way it pans out, I'll be glad to continue to learn and pass along any advice that I can offer to make things better for this community. Ward, thanks a ton for what you do for us all (and your minions that sometimes prefer to stay out of the limelight).
 

jerrm

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Without diving into GPL licensing too deep, this is the "tivoization" problem GPL3 is suppose to solve.
As long as the code is under GPL v.2 you can get away with it. The moment it is GPL v.3 - you can't.

Makes XIVO even more attractive - nobody can pull a Sangoma/FreePBX on it!
Don't kid yourself, with a change of corporate leadership, XIVO could easily become just as closed or more so than FreePBX.

Add on and new modules, and even upgraded (rewritten) versions of modules can be "privatized." Just changing the source availability to an unfriendly method effectively kills it as a collaborative open source project. No longer generating easy to use isos or stand alone install packages effectively kills it. Sure it can still be forked, but historically, that has rarely been successful. Yes there are exceptions, but based on asterisk community history, I don't see it happening.

Not saying such privatization will happen, there is definitely a different mindset evident with XIVO, but GPLv2 vs GPLv3 makes little if any difference if Avencall or their successor decides to take a different path.
 

wardmundy

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@jerrm: XiVO has been around for 10 years and still has the original development staff in place and working. Sure. Things can change. Don't we all know it. But Avencall has built a huge, profitable business as a systems integrator while retaining ALL of the original developers. I've seen no evidence that they plan to sell out either their product, their business model, or their users.

As I said before, if you want a better guarantee, you're going to have to pay for it by using/moving to a commercial platform. Once you make that choice, I see no reason anyone would ever stick with FreePBX.
 

jerrm

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@jerrm: XiVO has been around for 10 years and still has the original development staff in place and working. Sure. Things can change. Don't we all know it. But Avencall has built a huge, profitable business as a systems integrator while retaining ALL of the original developers. I've seen no evidence that they plan to sell out either their product, their business model, or their users.

As I said before, if you want a better guarantee, you're going to have to pay for it by using/moving to a commercial platform. Once you make that choice, I see no reason anyone would ever stick with FreePBX.
Agreed, as said, a different mindset is evident with XIVO.

Just pointing out the license version is pretty much irrelevant. Things could change overnight regardless. With continued success, odds are eventually someone will come along with right price. Who knows what would happen then, but all you can plan for is today.

Commercial platforms are no better. There was a point in the early-mid 2000's where it seemed like Symantec bought up(and ruined) virtually every network management/security product we used at the time. If those companies stayed independent, I'd probably still be using them. It was amazing how fast Symantec (not that they were the only guilty party) could take a great product and turn it into crap.
 

krzykat

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It's all about the business model. Companies need to make money - understood. Some have found opensource as a method to make money - while others have decided that keeping things to themselves is the best method. As a previous programmer, I myself have had problems and it took me a long time to come to terms and understanding that with open source, one can make just as much if not more money with it. I'm now using Nagios to monitor PBX installs (AWESOME PROGRAM !!! ) and its open and I think I read that if it was private it would have taken over 100 man years to develop it ... the power of multiple programmers and open source. They make a killing supporting that program without crippling it.
 

henry

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... XIVO could easily become just as closed or more so than FreePBX.
It sure can happen... GOING FORWARD. But today's codebase can't be "locked"...

Hence, as long as you are happy with its features/stability set TODAY, you don't have to move to the "golden cage"...

Just like Ward said, Asterisk and related telephone systems are one of the most conservative spaces.You don't fschk with what works!
 

jerrm

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It sure can happen... GOING FORWARD. But today's codebase can't be "locked"...
The same could have been said for FPBX a year ago. To use your own words, they could at any moment "pull a Sangoma/FreePBX" on XIVO (again, I don't really see that happening).

For all the hype, in practice GPL licensing means very little in this regard unless there is a broad enough community desire to keep the open product open. FreePBX is a prime example.

Just like Ward said, Asterisk and related telephone systems are one of the most conservative spaces. You don't fschk with what works!
True, and I am not an upgrade for the sake of upgrading kind of guy, but I'd never implement anything new without some level of near-mid term bug fix/maintenance. I have no desire for a FreePBX variant I have to backport patches to. I'd rather live with FPBX13, probably non-distro, but distro if need be.
 

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