[Asterisk-Users] CE certification for Europe

[d hinton]

ok, ok, enough
this all started because my company liked the hardware and wanted to buy
some but had concerns about how legal they actually was. so i requested the
fcc #'s.  because if we was going to buy 4-8 cards with the supporting
hardware we wanted to make sure we was covered. because without FCC and UL
cert, in the USA insurance companies will not cover you in a data center
inviroment if something went wrong. in fact the Bells won't connect you (if
they know)

after several failed request for digium to provide cert num we researched
the prospect of making, testing and cert our own. we didn't intend to sell
the to the public, and nowhere did we say we did. we just found that we
could produce said cards for a fraction of what diguim charges and in the
GPL spirit i released this info to the list. not to cause this much ruckus,
but rather to say that if the original work was done under GPL then
everything about it should have a GPL flavor, even it's pricing. also stop
using the M$, cisco or intel saying of "we're recovering our development
cost"  because they actually invested big $ and unless you're comp'ing the
other guys who worked then save it! like i said i worked on a project where
guy took everyones hard work changed the lic to commercial, leaving us all
high and dry. at least M$ pays it's dev team.

as i said before, it's just more cost effective for us to produce, test and
cert and then buy support. at least when buying large number of cards. which
is what we would like to do. nothing personal and no hard fellings, just
more cost effective, in hard eco times. there's too many IT guys out of
work, for me to waste the resources of my small company (job protection
:-D).

Also, digium if i was you i'd destroy all evidence that i sold these cards
before your cert date, as they could fine you up to $250 per day (about $100
Grand per year), from the first date they can prove you sold them. that
would kill most budgets.


----- Original Message -----
From: "David Stubbs" <stubbsd at es-net.co.uk>
To: <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2003 1:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] CE certification for Europe


> we are what you would call a small company dwayne, we have less that 20
> extentions in use but.. Asterisk is working quite well for us, and it
> beat EVERYTHING we could find in the market for COST! and functionality.
> in fact it came in under £3,000 less!. ( and the was with no voice mail
> queues . . .. etc).
>
> The most expesive thing we got was the channel bank..
>
> The the most conforting thing we got was the support of digium and Mark.
> If we have a problem, we searching though the new groups, if that don't
> help, we have the irc channels.. thanks to all you great people on there
> :-). But if that doesn't help or we need help NOW .. we are company down
> time means mouny, Mark is always ready to help us out of the shit.
>
> For that we would gladly pay double.. and we would still have a cheeper
> system :)
>
> GPL is great, if for some reason the main develpers can no longer work
> on a project, people can step in. If you want to change direction you
> can but.
>
> Digium Have provide I wonderfull mix, the freedom and security that the
> GPL gives a company AND the support it needs when we needs it.
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 08:16, asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
> wrote:
> > > first off the majority of work on the cards was made by zapata guys,
let's
> > > give them the credit. secondly are you talking about hardward support
or
> > > asterisk software support?
> >
> > Wrong.  The Tormenta2 was truly a joint venture between us.  Digium
> > *totally* funded its development, *and* I personally did most of the
> > driver work.  The zaptel engine was totally rewritten from the original
> > tor.c driver.  Just compare what is//was on the zapata site with what is
> > in CVS and see for yourself.
> >
> > > also we're getting off base here, my intent was NOT to bash digium for
their
> > > prices but rather find a way to get people without the huge budget of
a
> > > great company like yours, to be able to add to the project in a
meaningful
> > > way. few can at the current pricing schema, that's why the original
makers
> > > sold it at ~$250 USD and released it GPL in the first place. just my
two
> > > cents
> >
> > The original torisa was a very different beast.  The BOM was
substantially
> > less expensive, it only used a two layer board, and it was hand built by
> > Dude.  There is a reason you can't buy them anymore.  The Tormenta 2 has
> > to be done with surface mount, had a very substantial capital investment
> > in producing it, not to mention all the additional driver work, and has
> > received FCC certification (which presumably you would not be providing
in
> > your knock-off board -- and no, Digium's certs don't extend to you).
> >
> > When volumes increase, we will be in a better position to try to reduce
> > cost (and thus price).  Right now, the quantities of boards being moved
> > are very small (on the scale of things) and we have priced ourselves
> > extremely competitively compared with existing product offerings.  We're
> > focusing on building a good support and development infrastructure, and
> > it's a lot of hard work.
> >
> > Digium has operated unlike essentially any other telecom company.  We
have
> > released all our drivers and software under Open Source licensing -- on
an
> > architecture in which almost all the real logic lies in the software.
We
> > have tried to be as open as possible, in spite of the risks that we open
> > ourselves up to.
> >
> > We know we will not always be the low cost leader -- we can't do that
and
> > at the same time pour as much into Asterisk as we do, and to do so would
> > be suicide.  In order to continue to build our hardware revenues, we
will
> > have to defend our position with quality of product and support, and
> > through the loyalty of customers who, like Steven, see real value in
what
> > we are doing and see the long term value in supporting us as a company.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Asterisk-Users mailing list
> > Asterisk-Users at lists.digium.com
> > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>
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