Both Chris Lyman, CEO of Fonality, and Andrew Gillis, the founder of Asterisk@Home - now Trixbox, responded to my previous post pondering the relationship between Trixbox and Fonality. Long story short, it looks like the open-source Trixbox project is safe from any commercial intentions. Just a case of one Linux-based commercial company helping out a Linux hobbyist. You just gotta love the Linux community!
Also, interesting to read how the name "trixbox" came about:
Tom: So what’s the deal with Trixbox. I thought I read you were the registrar of this domain a few days ago, but now it’s registered to a registrar “anonymous” proxy service.
Chris: We helped him with the domain registration (we are old hosting guys, my CTO and I ran one of the largest hosting companies in the world before selling it to a telephone company in 2000.) Andrew may have changed the domain service when he got worried that it might appear that Fonality was trixbox. (Actually I) checked about the domain. To be honest, I now do *not* think that my CTO helped him register the domain, but I could be wrong. But I do know that we are paying for the hosting of the site, and helped Andrew with a bunch of things including legal advice, etc.
Tom: Are you running the show with Trixbox – the replacement for Asterisk@Home?
Chris: No it is Andrew’s show. We provide him free hosting and bandwidth. He is very much the owner and leader of that community. Andrew and Fonality have begun to closely work together as of late because a) we wanted them to bake HUDlite into trixbox b) we wanted to get to know the Asterisk open source community a bit better. So far the relationship has been good. Andrew agreed to bake HUDlite into trixbox, which gives us access to all his users. And, he has taught us a lot about the mindset of the Asterisk hobbyist. In exchange we have done him some favors. We help sponsor him wherever we can, including: web-hosting, bandwidth, we sent him a PBXtra to play with, etc.
Tom: Anything behind the name change? Did Mark Spencer send a cease and desist to protect a trademark on the name “Asterisk”? (assuming he trademarked Asterisk)
Chris: Andrew told me that he got an email from Digium a long time ago, stating that Asterisk was their trademark. I didn’t know of any legal letter…so you may know more than I know. I thought it was all pretty casual.
Tom: How much control (if any) do you have over the Trixbox development?
Chris: Very little. Unless Andrew really likes something I say to him I guess.
Tom: Is the plan to simply convert over Trixbox users to Fonality?
Chris: Trixbox is a free open source community – largely international. Fonality is a commercial paid product, largely domestic. We couldn’t be farther apart in communities, interest, or financial objectives. I guess our only real common ground is a usage and love of Asterisk.
And here's a response from Andrew from Trixbox regarding my blog post
Andrew: I created Asterisk@Home a year ago on a whim. I thought what a great idea to make Asterisk easy to install. It very quickly grew much bigger than I thought it would. One day Digium contacted me and told me that Asterisk is their trademark but I could use it as long as my project remained totally open source.
This sounded good from the start but it put restrictions of the product such as loosing the ability to use free (not open source) software. Then theres my user base. As it turns out most of my users were running Asterisk@Home for business and they didn’t like the name.
The Asterisk@Home name also pigeon holes the product into being an Asterisk distribution. I want to make it more than that and include other type of software. I want it to do more tricks. So the new name trixbox.
I do own the trixbox.org name. I register all my domains using anonymous servers. Hope this helps out. If you are interested in doing a review of trixbox or an interview with me. Just let me know.
android apple asterisk at&t blackberry cell phone cisco dell digium e911 facebook fcc google google talk gps im ip-pbx ipad iphone ipod itexpo ITEXPO lync microsoft mobile phone open source outage phone review sip skype sony unified communications verizon video video conferencing voip vonage wireless xbox 360
- Apple (280)
- Bittorrent (2)
- Call Center and CRM (48)
- Computer Hardware (183)
- Computer Software (71)
- Gadgets (650)
- Google (225)
- Home Entertainment (263)
- Internet (173)
- Linux (111)
- Microsoft (376)
- MovableType (48)
- News (187)
- Personal and Humor (118)
- Politics (9)
- Reviews (246)
- Security (2)
- Social Networking (42)
- Sports/Outdoor Technology (9)
- Tablets (32)
- Technology and Science (355)
- Unified Communications (471)
- VoIP (2285)
- Wireless (584)
- p2p (20)
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
Featured Videos