Jitsi Videobridge vs Skype?

[Carsten Agger]

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?
--
http://www.modspil.dk
https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/


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[Nikos Roussos]

Post by Carsten Agger
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
--
Nikos Roussos
http://www.roussos.cc

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[Daniel Pocock]

Post by Nikos Roussos

Post by Carsten Agger
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

Post by Nikos Roussos

Post by Carsten Agger
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