Nortel Strong-Arms Open Source Vendor Fonality 143
leecidivo alerts us to Tom Keating's blog, where he writes about how Nortel forced a former subsidiary to return its open source-based phone system (Fonality) after the subsidiary went public with how happy they are with the Fonality phone system compared to Nortel. Quoting: "What happens when a VoIP blog (yours truly) writes about the fact that a former Nortel subsidiary (Blade Network Technologies) went looking for a new phone system, chose an open-source Asterisk-based solution from Fonality instead of using Nortel's own PBX and then agreed to go on record on the VoIP & Gadgets blog about why they made such a shocking decision? A) Nothing — it's a VoIP blog — who cares? Nortel is an $11 billion dollar company that certainly doesn't read blogs for their news. B) Nortel reads the blog post, is a little peeved, but other than some emails sent internally, no one outside Nortel would ever know they were annoyed. C) A Nortel Board Member flips out over the article, contacts Blade and then pressures Blade to return the Fonality system and have Fonality print a retraction to the blog article (and the subsequent press release)."
The guy didn't follow the PR policy (Score:5, Informative)
Violating the company's PR policy is a big deal, for the obvious reasons. I'm surprised that the IT Director is still employed there.
Re:The guy didn't follow the PR policy (Score:5, Informative)
You're making a ridiculous, unfounded statement. As per the article, they followed the procedure, and at least per the article, did not deny it.
There is nothing in the article that indicates that anyone did anything wrong until the point at which they (Blade) announced that they had changed their mind.
You have no reason to believe that he DID violate their PR policy.
Until you do, please label all your speculations as such.
Re:Um, I'll take The Rapists for $200 Alex (Score:3, Informative)
Ownership and having control of a board memeber is an amazingly effective way to apply pressure to a company.
So while the slashdot article summary refers to Blade as a "former subsidiary", it fails to outline that Nortel does still has significant direct control over Blade.
It's not their own product. (Score:3, Informative)
Why would it be? (Score:4, Informative)
The person in question is NOT a "Nortel board member." He is on the Board of Directors of Blade Network Technologies [bladenetwork.net], the company which issued the press release. It's perfectly reasonable for a member of a company's Board of Directors to call the CEO and tell them they disagree with a decision, it no doubt happens quite frequently, since that's part of what the BoD does.
Now, that particular board member is also an employee of Nortel (Vice President of Business Development, according the BoD bio), but that does not mean that he was speaking from that capacity.
It's really pretty stupid to issue a press release which disses a company with which one of your board members has an outside relationship. Whoever approved that press release (Director of IT?) should have known that 2 of 4 members of his own company's board, including the CEO, had strong ties to the company he was dissing. The reaction shouldn't be unexpected.
PBXtra is not Open Source (Score:5, Informative)
You can not have the source for PBXtra. They'll give you the Asterisk code before they apply their patches, but they won't give you the source for their interface or their changes.
They might if you buy their product --I don't know, I've never bought it, but you are certainly not allowed to distribute the product to someone else after you buy it.
Just sayin'.
Anyway, Trixbox is FOSS. But PBXtra -- no.
Re:PBXtra is not Open Source (Score:3, Informative)
I believe (but don't know for sure and I don't feel like researching it right now) that Fonality has a special license with Digium for Asterisk. This is not unheard of.
In order for any patch to be included in the GPL Asterisk the author must assign their copyright to Digium, which allows them to do the whole dual license thing.
This is one of the reasons why OpenPBX forked from Asterisk.
Nortel is also Open Source (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Informative)
You might be right, but I really doubt it. I just entertained 5 offers from 5 vendors for VoIP systems. No OSS, yet every one was 80% cheaper than what was offered just 4 years ago. Am I missing something? If commercial solutions are 80% cheaper since 5 years ago shouldn't OSS solutions be, what, 95% cheaper? I'm sure you might be able to offer me a system that is 1/20 the price of what I could buy 4 years ago. The problem is, that it doesn't matter. For a few dollars more, I'm happy to pay for corporate support.
PS I have made my living for the last 8 years using OSS, hell, I'm even posting via Gnome and my last windows box is running '98. I run a small shop and support in the low hundreds of customers and I am very happy doing it. But when I buy a phone system, a cell phone, a router, whatever, I can give two shits about philosophy. I just want it to work and when it breaks, I want to make a phone call and have it fixed.
Yes, it is open source - learn your GPL law (Score:1, Informative)