Well this takes up to the core issues of many open source developments. Basically, Digium makes money from selling hardware and support services. Competition on the hardware side should be fine as long as the Competition is responsible to the open source community by re-investing a portion of the proceeds to the further development of the software.
Digium benefits from this in that they are not the sole supply of business development on the software and in this case Sangoma brings a history of quality products and this should gather more potential users of the software. This might drive Digium out of the market for hardware, but what Sangoma lacks is the support services for the software. While this may seem like a bad thing for Digium to get out of the business of making and selling hardware, it would allow them to focus more on the services and development side. As long as they gain an appropriate level of new business on the support side, they should do ok. Plus add to the table that now Sangoma has a vested interest in seeing Digium do well as a company as if for any reason they stop development of their software, people wouldn't be driven to buy the Sangoma Hardware. Following this trend, Card manufacturers could actually set a level of product price to be paid to Digium for additional software development if they were unable/unwilling to do the work themselves. I doubt that Digium makes huge profits on their sales of hardware as the numbers of manufacturing runs must drive up their cost. Sangoma has the contacts and existing product lines to support quality manufacturing. What is more worrisome would be a Alternative card that cuts it sales price at the sacrifice to the community. It would be easy for a Board Manufacturer to clone the Digium or Sangoma design and flood the market with cards. Not funneling money back into the project would cripple or destroy the project. As a responsible participant of the project it is important to be aware of the policies of the companies of the products you buy. Disclaimer: This is my humble opinions only. This is how I view the changing market that Digium has to face, from what I know of them they are capable of taking these changes in stride and do quite well. Chad C. Wicker Systems Engineer Petrocom >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 3/31/2005 9:30:27 AM >>> Brian Capouch wrote: > I'll be glad to stand corrected, but if that assertion is in fact > true, we should be careful to do things that actually damage Digium's > ability to leverage their development of Asterisk with their hardware > sales. It sucks that its such a fine line. On the one had, it is good to have competition. Keeps prices in check, and gets new features out faster. But on the other hand, yes, buying from someone else may say to Digium "well, I guess we can stop now that they are buying someone elses cards." -Matthew _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
