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PostPosted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 3:00 pm 
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callingcard, you ready to pay a huge money for this? :wink:


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 3:37 pm 
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did you think about people, who can't pay? :(
ps: why you write personal message to areski on public but not to directly him (e-mail or PM) ?


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:02 pm 
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callingcard wrote:
The question was very specific.

and very personal too. but you write it on public place. and dont want talk to anyone but areski. very strange.. :shock:


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 6:56 pm 
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Location: Athens, Greece
It's all about the GPL and its implications: you/we/areski cannot *sell* the software at any price. Instead, he can sell any services on it, as a way to be paid for his work.

I find that model best.

If you know Linux and telecom stuff, you do have a fine piece of software that does great work and you have to pay nothing. If you don't, you can hire any of those programmers to set it up for you and have it run smooth as silk. If you intend to pay nothing and learn nothing, you may just consider them crap.

An ISO wouldn't work: a2billing problems are all about configuration. Each setup is rather unique anyway. GPL forbids any price on it. And, frankly, if Areski and his team spent €200k of work time for some software, why package it in a form that you could illegally copy? It's better that they personally sell it as a service contract!


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:59 pm 
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If an ISO is created, people will very soon start to complain about the choice of the linux distro :lol: .

But I believe that should any ISO project be launch, it won't hurt to sell the ISO for a small amount of money. How about $4.95 for download, and $4.95 + shipping for a CD version. 8)

The price will help cover the bandwidth usage fees, and everything related to maintaining the ISO.

Suggestions?


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 5:11 pm 
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you very wrong if you think what it is so easy to create some distro and SUPPORT it. actualy this is very hard and take A LOT of time. i dont think what areski will interesting about this and for big money. :)
ps: we know few distros with a2b on cd, why you people whant one more? :?
one more think - if you CAN'T install the billing and make it working well - how you will install the linux + (same)billing? ;)
if you want to answer what you can - so, what the reason to ask areski to stop polish billing and create some distro for you.. if you can install linux and if you not lamo - do it by your self. and may be i will buy it later ;) (but i dont think so, because you will not do this, right?)


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 5:25 pm 
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if you not last lamo on the planet - you will use google and stop this flame.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 5:35 pm 
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Personally, I couldn't care less about maintaining a linux distro. I was referring to maintaining the ISO itself whenever a new or updated version of A2B will be out. And if you don't like the idea, it does not mean that it's a bad idea. Just don't use the ISO when it will be available. I sure that some people will. How many A2Biller out there has asked how to make CID-Callback work? Personally, I receive almost an average of 1 or 2 request per week. The same goes for the cront service configuration and the list goes on.

From my point of view, the ISO will help people test every features of A2Billing correctly installed.

And please anest (anonymous_a), let Areski speak for himself.

The price charge here will be for the distribution, not for the A2B code itself. So I don't see any infringement of the GPL agreement there.

And if someone cannot pay 5 bucks, that's too bad. This is not charity. One way or another, A2Billing is a business tool. And in this life, we cannot have everything for free.


Last edited by asiby on Thu Jan 10, 2008 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 5:52 pm 
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Location: Athens, Greece
I agree with anest in the fact that some complete distro needs too much time to support, and that would draw development time from a2billing itself. I had been personally involved in some other distro, where I learned how hard it is. In a well-setup a2billing box you may need the database, postfix, security etc. ...

On the other hand, why not choose one or two major, server-friendly distros like Fedora or Debian and build a package for them? That could ease some installing issues. An RPM (I have built a few) can take care of several installation procedures, as well as dependencies.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 6:04 pm 
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callingcard, please stop the cheating with editing your OLD posts *after* my answers. this is not smart and on most forums it is forbidden by rules.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 9:30 am 
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Dear all

I am going to have a rant at some of the points made in these posts.

1. GPL licensed software can be sold - any one of you can take the software and put it on a CD and sell it or on the Internet - as long as you supply the source code. And, you cannot stop anyone re-selling it themselves, even if they are re-selling what you sold them.

2. The "free" in the GPL license refers to the freedom to modify the code and view the code, not that the code is given to you free of charge - A2Billing choses not to charge for its' software.

3. You may modify the code - if you re-distribute the code (including selling it or giving it away), then you have to pass your modifications back into the open source - if you use it for your own use say as a Telecoms company, you can do pretty much what you like with it.

4. I know for a fact that contributions to this project are very very low and do not go far towards paying the hosting costs and certainly do not cover anywhere near the actual work that goes into this project.

5. The only notable source of income for this project is by doing consultancy for those who have a business idea, and do not want to spend time learning how to combine Asterisk, A2Billing, Apache, PHP, Linux, MySQL, possibly FreePBX and anyone knows what else, into a reliable working business class product for an order of magnitude less than what you pay commercially, and just want to get on with providing profitable services.


The main problem to providing an ISO is that this would remove a fairly large chunk of revenue that installation services and support provided by A2Billing gives, which I would personally doubt, would be replaced by donations, should an ISO be provided.

As product manager at Asterisk2Billing, I would like to spend money on advertising in the trade press, do trade shows, run training courses, demonstrations and generally raise the profile of A2Billing in the Telecoms industry, but there is no budget available, I too live hand to mouth based on PBX, A2Billing and telecoms / wireless consultancy. I know that many notables in the Telecoms industry would not know Asterisk if they found it eating their breakfast one morning, let alone A2Billing.

The last time I got a quote for a calling card platform from 2 well known companies in the UK, albeit 3 years ago, the cost for a billing platform with SIP capability was just over £60,000GBP providing 30 concurrent calls only, and I have no reason to suspect that this cost has changed markedly. Compare and contrast with the cost of a decent server, a Digium E1/T1 card, and a copy of Asterisk/A2billing.

Therefore, I implore you to use call-labs.com as your carrier, as profits from this service go back into A2Billing - If there are services that you want from call-labs, which are not supplied at present, then let us know and we will see what we can do.

Failing that, many of you you have must have contacts in the Telecoms and IT trade, make the introductions, and I will do the work to raise the profile of A2Billing.

For those of you that contribute code, your efforts are appreciated, and you know that a lot of your code is included.

For those of you that provide step by step guides, again, this is appreciated, but in addition to posting on your own website you'd be welcome to post them on the the Asterisk2Billing Wiki. In respect of providing an ISO, we have done as much as we dare by providing Trixbox installation instructions, coupled with a script.

Finally - if anyone can suggest a way of providing an ISO without impacting on the the Asterisk2Billiing reveue stream, such as it is, then we would be happy to hear from you, and be happy to provide the ISO.

Yours

Joe Roper


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 9:11 pm 
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Location: Canada
I can see clearly now ...

I didn't really know that there as such a tight link between call-labs and a2billing.

I have made my decision: NO ISO.


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PostPosted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:49 am 
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Location: English Indiana, USA
OK I feel like rambling so here I go :up:

The more I use A2b the more I love it. I say NO NO NO to an ISO. I seen both Areski and others state that contributions made by users of a2b are very little. I donated around $230 in the last year and half and feel I should probably donate more. I am also donating code I paid a fortune for which I hope makes it into a2b even though I didn’t design any Guis for it.

Some people whine their hearts out at the cost of Microsoft software and these same people whine over open source for not doing what they want when they contributed very little if any to the project. All I got to say to all who uses a2b, start contributing if you not already doing so!!!. Just look around for any software that does anything near what a2b does that is not open source and see what it cost. Jroper is so right and have explain it quite well. Other software that even does half what a2b does cost a fortune.

By the way A2billing when is properly set up it works very well with FreePBX as a complete Vonage type of solution (minus the customer GUI) and it can be also used as a billing platform for other telephony software. One of the guys from this forms has help me a great deal with setting this up and I am truly indebted to him. I have spent a great of time running every possible test I can think of to find the bugs and so far am a quite surprised at how A2b is so easily implemented as a billing application and capable of receiving and handing off calls to other applications on the same server.


And to the “Callingcard” GUY, my suggestion to you is go to rentacoder.com. I am sure you can find some India guy to create you an ISO.

If you really have enough need for an easy ISO solution for deployment on multiple servers its clear you should be making plenty of money unless you really a lousy businessman. Just one copy of a2b can make one a lot of money if you play your cards right. So dont be shy about throwing a little of that gold at Areski's feet

Even if you paid Areski 5,000 USD, to make an ISO install of a2b it could in the long run not profitable at all for him if most of the income made on a2b is from installation or customization of it.


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