For those that never followed or stopped following the other long thread (you're probably better off if you didn't read it), there was one thing that came up late in the thread that I thought should be broken out and highlighted, since it's not been mentioned here before:
said by uid://780972 :said by uid://1754803 :Xivo is hard, no 2 ways around that. It is clear that their audience is not the casual hobbyist. I downloaded it and played with it. Not all that user friendly. A bit too young of an interface for me to trust in production. Have you looked at Ombutel?
I have not, because your post is the first time I've heard of it. Obviously I can't comment on it yet, but thank you for mentioning it.
EDIT: I went to their site at https://www.ombutel.com/ and had a look around. Just from what I can see, this is a very new project that has just entered Beta stage, and at this point there is no text documentation at all, but there are some interesting videos. Their interface looks very usable, and already more polished than XiVO's, and actually compares favorably to the FreePBX interface IMHO. Their download is an ISO file which includes Centos 7 as the OS, so probably no chance at all of getting it to run on a Raspberry Pi. They are NOT open source. This definitely looks like a distro geared toward businesses and call centers; at present there is no built-in support for Google Voice at all. There is also no fax module (for sending faxes), if that matters to anyone.
I do not think those with a FreePBX background would find it hard to get around in their interface; from what I see on the first couple of videos it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult of a transition. They have a user forum; the first post in it was only made about four months ago, so again it seems very new. According to a post in that forum, "the base system will be free to download and use", and "add-ons will be available for a fee." So kind of like FreePBX in that regard (at least they don't have "free" in their name).
I guess I'd say that if you don't mind playing with a beta version, don't need Google Voice connectivity (or don't mind using the Simonics gateway), and don't mind using closed-source software, this would be worth a look. Even if all those things aren't true for you, you might want to at least watch the first video on the tutorials page, because it shows what their GUI looks like. Because it's closed source, I have no idea how difficult it would be to add your own bits of custom dialplan (such as what you might add in extensions_custom.conf or extensions_override_freepbx.conf in FreePBX). Definitely a project worth keeping an eye on, because if development doesn't stagnate now that the beta is released (something I've seen happen to too many promising projects), in six months or a year from now it could really be viable competition to FreePBX.
IF they had a Raspberry Pi version I'd definitely be trying this out (do not take this as a "request" or "demand" for such a version, as some have been quick to do when I make such a statement, I'm just saying that right now it would be easy for me to throw this on a Pi and play around if such a version were available). However I definitely get the vibe that this one isn't intended primarily for home or even very small office users, so I'm not holding my breath.
Please note that some of my comments above might make more sense in the context of the original thread, but if you have been looking for an alternative to FreePBX and/or the "Incredible" PBX that is actually usable, this might fit the bill. They are still in beta, but IMHO their GUI shows more polish now than some projects that have been around for years, so if they can keep it up, by the time they get it out of beta it could be something great. It may not yet be ready for production systems, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on if you don't care for the currently-available choices. Thanks to uid://1754803 for mentioning it!
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