Some time back, Sam Tuke posted the findings of the FSFE group in Manchester about "the hunt for Skype alternatives".
Sadly, at the time the conclusion was that there were no *real* replacements, as Skype handled some things (specifically lagging, I think, and latency - latency used to be a *huge* problem in SIP telephony) exceedingly well.
Recently, however, I've been using the public Jitsi videobridge https://meet.jit.si almost daily. It doesn't work with Firefox, but it works with Chromium, most of the time nearly as if there was a hole in the screen to the other person. I'm kind of impressed, and I see fewer problems with the sound etc. that I usually do in Skype for GNU/LInux (which I almost never use - I have to use it sometimes to communicate with customers, though).
Does anyone know of any compelling reason NOT to recommend Jitsi Videobridge as a real free alternative to Skype?
On 10/11/2014 10:42 PM, Carsten Agger wrote:
Some time back, Sam Tuke posted the findings of the FSFE group in Manchester about "the hunt for Skype alternatives".
Sadly, at the time the conclusion was that there were no *real* replacements, as Skype handled some things (specifically lagging, I think, and latency - latency used to be a *huge* problem in SIP telephony) exceedingly well.
Recently, however, I've been using the public Jitsi videobridge https://meet.jit.si almost daily. It doesn't work with Firefox, but it works with Chromium, most of the time nearly as if there was a hole in the screen to the other person. I'm kind of impressed, and I see fewer problems with the sound etc. that I usually do in Skype for GNU/LInux (which I almost never use - I have to use it sometimes to communicate with customers, though).
Does anyone know of any compelling reason NOT to recommend Jitsi Videobridge as a real free alternative to Skype?
For me the fact that it's not supported by Firefox is a stopper, but it's certainly better that Skype.
What i tend to use more and more lately is Loop [1], the embedded on Firefox WebRTC Video Call service. It works really great with zero configuration. Currently it only supports 1-1 calls and it's on Firefox Beta (will be part of the next stable release).
[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop
On 11/10/14 23:46, Nikos Roussos wrote:
On 10/11/2014 10:42 PM, Carsten Agger wrote:
Some time back, Sam Tuke posted the findings of the FSFE group in Manchester about "the hunt for Skype alternatives".
Sadly, at the time the conclusion was that there were no *real* replacements, as Skype handled some things (specifically lagging, I think, and latency - latency used to be a *huge* problem in SIP telephony) exceedingly well.
Recently, however, I've been using the public Jitsi videobridge
Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet are slightly different things - what you are using is Jitsi Meet (the WebRTC videobridge).
Emil explains it thoroughly in his video at DebConf13:
http://penta.debconf.org/dc13_schedule/events/1050.en.html
https://meet.jit.si almost daily. It doesn't work with Firefox, but it works with Chromium, most of the time nearly as if there was a hole in the screen to the other person. I'm kind of impressed, and I see fewer problems with the sound etc. that I usually do in Skype for GNU/LInux (which I almost never use - I have to use it sometimes to communicate with customers, though).
Does anyone know of any compelling reason NOT to recommend Jitsi Videobridge as a real free alternative to Skype?
For me the fact that it's not supported by Firefox is a stopper, but it's certainly better that Skype.
Actually, the limitation is in Firefox. As soon as Firefox supports multiple simultaneous streams, it will start working for Jitsi Meet
JSCommunicator works in both Firefox and Chrome but it only allows regular two-person calls. You only need to use Jitsi Meet and Chromium if you want to have three or more people in a call.
I would be happy to provide an fsfe.org WebRTC service similar to https://rtc.debian.org - this would allow FSFE members to receive WebRTC calls using their @fsfe.org addresses. Non-FSFE members can then call you using https://freephonebox.net and it all works in Firefox
Dear Daniel,
* Daniel Pocock daniel@pocock.pro [2014-10-12 02:31:18 +0200]:
I would be happy to provide an fsfe.org WebRTC service similar to https://rtc.debian.org - this would allow FSFE members to receive WebRTC calls using their @fsfe.org addresses. Non-FSFE members can then call you using https://freephonebox.net and it all works in Firefox
Thanks for that great offer, which I appreciate a lot. Our admins are currently working on a bigger migration, but I forwarded your offer to them so they know about it.
Best Regards, Matthias