Digium, Sangoma and Rhino in a group hug!

But, you never know... My impression is that they see the space as so large that there is no reason not to be civil.

Robert,
I typically like you but your comment is totally whacked. You have a picture of ONE CEO from Sangoma and two tech support guys from Digium/Rhino. I really don't think any opinions of two guys from tech support really support any company opinion or corporate goals. Look at the so-called feud between Fonality and Digium, it wasn't over using the Asterisk code, it was because Fonality switched to using Sangoma cards. So obviously your view of the world is tainted.

fbosco,

You may not give a dingo's kidney about the community, but there's no reason to be so negative about competitors being social and amiable. Jared Smith has done lots for the community over the last couple of years, including the O'Reilly book. I think he's running Digium's training department now that Digium bought Sokol & Associates. And didn't James stand up for Digium in the asterisk-biz list last week?

i think you'll find that the things that unite us all are stronger than the minor things that divide us. Life's too short to be so petty.

Your comments here almost always come off as negative and petty. If this isn't what you mean to present, maybe you should consider proofing what you're typing a bit longer than you do.

In point of fact, the number of times I'm tempted to respond to your posts with "Have you self-diagnosed Aspergers yet?" is pretty high. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but your comments are pretty trying, and I get the feeling it's intentional. If it is true, that makes makes you a boring, simple and run-of-the-mill troll.

If I'm wrong I apologize, but if it quacks and looks like a duck... well, forgive me if I want to fry up some foie gras.

As much as I love being referred to as a grunt :)

We did this photo for exactly the reason that was stated by Robert. In the asterisk world there is no reason to be cut throat. I had dinner with Jared and probably talked an hour with David. It wasn't a I am better than you battle it was good clean conversation. In fact things like the email on the users list came up with both users and neither person saw my email as bad but as you will see in this post I am wordy so you may not catch the gist if you skim this. Anyhow there was allot of people at the FreePBX training where this was taken and If you ask any one of em this wasn't simply a 2 minute feel good moment for the camera. Anyhow Asterisk owns 1% of the PBX market to quote one of the lines from the training event "Other Asterisk installers are NOT your competition" same goes in the hardware side. We do not need to be cut throat because together we have 99% to conquer. We get to that 99%, well we shall see but I don't see that happening and if it does we will probably have to much work to be petty. I have been in the open source world a long time and have worked in other projects. I was introduced to asterisk because I was a Linux nut and found a job that would pay me for what I use to do for free and all I had to do was learn this asterisk application. Guess what my learning tool was... The book co-written by Jared. So again we are a community and we are all taking from the same pie but the pie is so huge no one will starve. Unfortunately the Big boys in our companies do have a business to run, They take their time out to go to events but scheduling determines which ones. Rhino is a part of the community and wants to do as much as possible that is why I went. The boss had another event he was at but I can tell you if he had gone to this one the same photo would have happened.

Here is the philosophy... What if you wanted a car and their was only 1 car maker. You would loose quality, value and service. In fact it would be like the Lily Tomlin sketch. "Sir we don't care we're the phone company we don't have to.

Competition between quality companies is healthy. Cooperation at the community level is vital however because without the community no one works. If Asterisk fails or my company fails I have to go get a regular job and will end up doing this all for free again....

My issue is with Robert and Robert only on this. His post is about the three big companies in a "group hug" and he posted the voip-info.org about "many vendors get together at freepbx training", this is pure and simple a lame attempt to promote his own blog site by insinuating that the three COMPANIES are making all nice to each other when the reality is actually far from it.

Digium as a company, represented by Mark Spencer and Bill Miller are NOT friendly to any competition be it Sangoma, Rhino, Fonality, or anyone else.

Sangoma as a company, represented by David Mandelsten has stated "Asterisk was just a toy until Sangoma cards came out"

Rhino, well...never heard Jim Rhoades ever say anything negative about anyone.

The grunts (by which I mean non-spokesholes and the people who actually do the work like all of us) do NOT represent the attitudes and opinions of the companies involved (which is good) but Robert tried to raise his web traffic by implying that the FreePBX training brought out all this mutual love for each other at a COMPANY level. I personally find it offensive that he trolled for traffic like that and because I actually had the nerve to call him out on it, I get crapped on.

There was a picture that went around from last year's Astricon. It had Mark Spencer holding a PIKA appliance while Kerry Garrison and Andrew Gillis looked on. Posting that picture and saying "Mark Spencer, Kerry Garrison, and Andrew Gillis gush priases at the wonderful new PIKA appliance" would have been the same thing as Robert did. It was a photo op, yes, was it a time of great healing and new respect for each other as these three big companies came together? Hell no.

So if you want to call out someone, call out Robert for this stupid self-promoting PR stunt.

fbosco

you are "one of us..." and who would "us" be?

I think this implies that fbosco is a Fonality employee.

And what company would that be?

It always boggles me how a thread like this will get so much traction. Come on, cosmicwombat obviously wasn't trying to decieve the Asterisk world with his post. And whats wrong with a little self-promotion? It's not like I am not guilty of that once in a while myself. So everone needs to lighten up a bit and not take ourselves so seriously sometimes.

I have been doing the IT thing for a while now and I have been doing the Internet thing longer than just about anyone you are ever going to meet (Sir Tim helped me with my first site) and at that time it was all about the community. Then the commercialization of the Internet started up in earnest and I found that the information I was giving freely was being used to "compete" against me. So, myself and many others stopped being so forthright with anyone at all.

The original Internet community started going south around 1993. Many years pass and along comes Andrew's brilliant ISO and I found a community with something that had a draw. A draw that obviously caught the eye of many of us.

Problem was that "commercialization" once again bared its teeth and the "community" started tearing itself asunder...once again.

All of this really bummed me out.

The point is this: The feeling I got while at the Open Telephony Training Seminar was very much like the early days of the Internet. Only this time it is in reverse and instead of falling apart...Things are starting to fall together. Instead of unhealthy competition... I am seeing healthy competition. Instead of rudeness... I am seeing a great amount of civil discourse.

We all know that Microsoft, Cisco, Nortel, etc are the ones we have to stand watch against and it is real obvious that there is plenty of room in the space we are in.

So, Chris you really need to take it easy. Call me out if you like, but as you can see that is not really something anyone wants to back you up on.

I didn't know about your little scare. I am pleased to hear it is not as bad as first thought.

Good heath to you sir!