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Nortel Strong-Arms Open Source Vendor Fonality
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)."
Every company I have worked at has a formal PR policy that says you cannot go on the record with the press (which is any time you are talking to them, if you are smart about it), you must clear it through PR. In some cases, once PR realizes that you're savvy enough to not say stupid things, they will put you on the "OK to contact directly" list.
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.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Well, from TFA, Nortel is still holdes a minority interest in Blade (the "forced" company). Also, one of Nortel's VP's sits on Blade's board of directors.
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.
-Matt
It's the product of someone who used to own them. And apparently still has some influnce.
The summary and article are both incorrect.
The person in question is NOT a "Nortel board member." He is on the Board of Directors of Blade Network Technologies, 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.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Yes, PBXtra is based on Asterisk, but it is a licensed closed-source derivative of the Asterisk code.
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.
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
The Nortel BCM50 PBX is also based on Linux .... except they don't supply the source with the system.
More to the point, CEOs tend to listed to VoIP geeks when we tell them we can build them a vastly more flexible phone system for 1/4 of what they'd spend on a big-budget vendor -- mine did.
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.
I was a former customer (at my last company they had one). All the source files were in the /usr/src directory on our server. They are bound to the GPL just like anyone who distributes GPL-based software, modified or not.