[asterisk-biz] Digium, Polycom, and Netxusa Cutting Us Out?!?

[shadowym]

Ahhh, but Asterisk and open source telephony in general is quite uncommon by
historical standards.

You are applying the traditional proprietary telephony hardware model to
open source, open standards telephony.



-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin P. Fleming [mailto:kpfleming at digium.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 7:21 AM
To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Digium, Polycom, and Netxusa Cutting Us Out?!?

Darren Nickerson wrote:
> Please consider this a public appeal for Digium to allow choice in the 
> market, rather than artificially restricting consumers' options. It's 
> better for everyone, including Digium I would argue, for there to be 
> competition.
> We move a lot of your product ourselves - we'd really like to be able 
> to be blessed as 'official' by y'all but we're really not in favor of 
> restricting the consumer's choice, and applaud the efforts of Sangoma, 
> Xorcom, and even Rhino. The competition has raised everyone's game, 
> led to competitive market pricing, and broadened Asterisk's reach and 
> credibility.

You will need to communicate this to the people at Digium who handle
reseller relations (which is certainly not me!). I understand your position,
but keep in mind that this policy is in no way uncommon in the telephony
industry. For example, if you sell Cisco gear and are a Cisco authorized
reseller, you are not allowed to install third-party/refurbished/used/etc.
components in your customers' Cisco switches/routers, because Cisco wants to
ensure that they are represented well.

In fact, it's really not uncommon for _any_ market where someone wants to be
an 'authorized' reseller representing a manufacturer. It's one thing to be
authorized to sell -solutions- from multiple vendors, but something else
entirely to package components from competing vendors and still claim to be
representing one of them as an 'authorized reseller'.