After the initial feedback on lack of Asterisk support for FreePBX, the dust have now settled.

But let's take a step back in time - approximately 15 months. Back then, the Trixbox people decided to spawn off their own version of FreePBX. I then stated that I really hoped that the FreePBX developers would not loose faith over this decision.

Fast forward to the last days announcements regarding version 3.0 of FreePBX.

Granted - it does not yet have Asterisk support, but keep in mind that this is a developer release, this means the support will eventually be there. As I will show in this article, is really does not matter if there is no Asterisk support yet.

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I do follow the trixbox community closely. I believe that trixbox is one reason why a lot of "PBX Built On Asterisk" companies will never have a chance in the long run.

So it is with quite some interest that I read a posting from Kerry Garrison in the trix box forum about a "fork" of the FreePBX front end.

The main reason stated is:

1. integrated GUI (so it looks professional when you sell it to your customers)
2. faster bug fixing
3. new features

Fixing the GUI so that it does at least appear more integrated with itself is paramount. Every time I work with the FreePBX GUI I do feel that it is a bunch of non-related packages thrown together.

It is also quoted that "We are utilizing what we call the patch-plus model (what we do with Asterisk, as well). This means that as future versions of Asterisk and FreePBX come out, we simply grab that code and apply our elaborate patch-plus script to it, and *wallah* you have the latest and greatest of FreePBX *plus* the latest and greatest of trixbox CE all in one interface." My question is - how long are they going to do that rather than create a clean fork. I have no reason not doubt that Fonality is trying to do the Right Thing - until proven otherwise I firmly believe that they are good guys.

For the sake of FreePBX I really hope the developers does not loose faith over this decision. For the FreePBX project this is a good thing - they get help fixing a lot outstanding issues. It is of course up to the FreePBX project to incorporate what they see fit into their own project.

In my opinion this could be a big win-win situation.