A recent post on the Elastix community page yielded the following:

Guayaquil, Ecuador, May 4th 2015 – PaloSanto Solutions, the company behind the Elastix Project, has established today a GIT repository for the development of a brand and distro agnostic GUI for unified communications servers. Additionally it conceives multi-tenancy.

The project will be independent and will start off with the mutiltenant GUI from Elastix MT. Currently this development is focused on using Asterisk as the telephony manager at its core, however, the project seeks to establish the basis for the inclusion of other projects that currently exist in the industry like FreeSwitch.

This project will be initially hosted and moderated by PaloSanto Solutions; it is an idea together with the PBX in a Flash team.

“We believe that by using Elastix GUI to kick off the project will help in assimilating it faster”, said PBX in a Flash’s CEO, Ward Mundy. “PaloSanto Solutions’ decision to create a GIT repo for development cooperation is also important because it will attract new actors to the project that will enhance its functionality”, he added.

“Since the release of Elastix MT we believed that there is the possibility to continue revolutionizing unified communications, and to establish tools that had not been integrated before”. Said Edgar Landivar, CEO of Elastix. “With the establishment of this repo we hope to establish a standard in the industry that will replace the concept of VoIP PBX”, he concluded.

The project is available today at https://github.com/elastixmt/elastix-mt-gui, and rules are being set regarding contributions to the development so that all interested people can join immediately.

Well, I think that I can understand where Elastix/PIAF are going with this. For a while now, I’ve seen various communications and rants roaming the community, regarding the way the FreePBX GUI is dominating the “Distro Market” – so to speak.

In general, I see this as a good thing, as it means that people will start re-focusing on technology. On the other side, we will end up – again – with the normal Open Source/Commercial debates (should we do? why shouldn’t we do?).

I know that people are going to jump me for what I’m about to say right now, but since the introduction of Asterisk 13 and ARI, the gaps between Asterisk and FreeSWITCH are rapidly closing in my book. I’ve already deployed several systems using ARI – and I don’t use a GUI at all. FreePBX in my book had become a large set of code, assembled partially by people who know what they are doing and partially not. With the Sangoma buy-out, I suspect that we’ll see more and more “Sangoma Centric” modules and features – and that’s normal. Same will apply to the Palo Santo alternative, as it becomes more and more acceptable by the market.

Is it truly the destiny of an Open Source product? to become dominated by their creators? to become a mere vessel of their creators to market their solutions and services. A recent conversation I had with a prospective client went somewhat sour, with me at a loss of answers to a very simple question. The client asked me: “Is there a FreePBX high availability solution? – one that is off the shelf”, my responses were these:

  • You can use the Schmoozecom High Availability solution
  • You can use the Digium High Availability solution
  • You can use the Xorcom High Availability solution

He replied – “What? isn’t there an Open Source alternative? something that had been tested and verified?” – my answer was: “We can always use Linux-HA, Heartbeat, mond and other Open Source tools to create the solution. But it won’t be as slick and neat as the commercial solutions, simply because that requires time.

About 9 years ago, Digium had a product called “Asterisk Business Edition”. The business edition was a highly regressed version of Asterisk, with slightly less features, aimed at being an Enterprise Grade product to work against. Digium realized fairly fast that the product had no place and had abandoned it several years later. Open source is about choice, make your choice, aid others is making a choice – but don’t take our freedom for choice. In my view, the distributions should target themselves to be “Market Aggregators”, not “Market Shapers” or “Market Makers” – this is not the stock market and no wolves den. The Asterisk Exchange is a good idea, if Digium would turn that into something that is embedded into AsteriskNOW and allows people to buy and install, directly from the UI, that would be a winner.

The Apple Store and Google Play became a success not because Apple or Google promoted them, they were made into success by the developers and people who wrote new things. Asterisk, FreeSwitch, Kamailio, OpenSIPS, FreePBX, Asterisk GUI – at least as see it, should be regarded as platforms for innovation, the things that make us go: “Hmmm…. interesting”, the immortal “Facsinating” comment made Mr. Spock.

Just my 0.02$ on the issue…