
Free software tools for staying in touch - lelf
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/better-than-zoom-try-these-free-software-tools-for-staying-in-touch
======
dang
Recent and related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22765899](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22765899)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758131)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756728)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22755596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22755596)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22669968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22669968)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22477785](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22477785)

Recent and seemingly related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22761816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22761816)

Not so recent:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16155155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16155155)

Not so recent and maybe not so related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311324)

~~~
cycloptic
Are those really the reason to bury this? There are several other programs
mentioned in the article besides Jitsi and Jami, some I didn't know about.

~~~
dang
Ok, we'll unbury it. Thanks!

------
oDot
Zoom is still the best performing software. Alternatives fail in various ways.
I wrote Emergency Remote[0], and for some companies thrown into the situation
it is best to use it anyway. They can't handle more trouble during this time.

[0]
[https://www.emergencyremote.com/EmergencyRemote.pdf](https://www.emergencyremote.com/EmergencyRemote.pdf)

~~~
tw04
I fundamentally disagree. Webex has been around longer and despite the zoom
founder trying to trash it, has been more reliable for me.

They just apparently spent their money on building an enterprise-worthy app
instead of marketing.

[https://help.webex.com/en-us/n80v1rcb/Cisco-Webex-
Available-...](https://help.webex.com/en-us/n80v1rcb/Cisco-Webex-Available-
Free-in-These-Countries-COVID-19-Response)

~~~
pkulak
They say they have a Linux app... but Zoom is available in official repos,
Flatpak, the Arch AUR, SUSE community, etc. That's huge for me. I don't really
have any interest in blazing a new trail to use a web conferencing app.

~~~
megous
AUR is not an official repo, and zoom is not in Arch Linux repositories
either.

~~~
pkulak
I didn't mean to imply that is was.

------
atonse
Going to put my bias out in the open. My whole career has benefited from Open
Source, yet when I see something from the FSF, I automatically assume it's
going to be ugly and not user-friendly.

Has anyone tried any of these FSF sanctioned tools? I'd love to have my bias
be proven wrong.

~~~
dsr_
Jitsi is very good. You can try it out at meet.jit.si or install your own
server in about 30 minutes. (Yesterday's updated Debian packages improved
things immensely.)

~~~
daffy
Installing one's own server seems horribly complicated on non-Debian-based
distributions.

------
aklemm
Matrix would be an excellent one to add for the Chat category. Lovely,
federated, and has voice/video calling that works great one-on-one.

~~~
ntw1103
I was sad to see that matrix wasn't on the list. Another great feature of
Matrix, is that it is a lot easier to setup that xmpp.

~~~
rakoo
I just installed synapse with Riot, and I have to say it's the exact contrary.
Some of the steps are not documented, I had to read the code to understand
what to do.

XMPP with Prosody on the other hand is one of the easiest servers I've ever
had to install

~~~
ntw1103
Out of curiosity, what guide did you follow? I followed the docs right on
github for synapse, and it was pretty easy. That being said, It was awhile
back, and it looks like they've updated the synapse guide.

~~~
rakoo
I installed Matrix behind Caddy, so I followed:

\- The archlinux guide:
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Matrix](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Matrix)
\- The official doc of running it behind a proxy: [https://github.com/matrix-
org/synapse/blob/master/docs/rever...](https://github.com/matrix-
org/synapse/blob/master/docs/reverse_proxy.md)

I couldn't really test if it worked as-is, so I needed to install Riot web,
still behind a proxy. It was also going to be my client of choice. That's
where things got fun:

\- Installing the arch package doesn't do anything, it's just a bunch of
static files, so you have to know how to serve them after that \- Riot needs
to go to your matrix's /.well-known/matrix/client, so you need to redirect it
to your synapse server (and the previous redirect is not enough, because the
previous redirect only cares about _matrix, not the root level) \- It failed
for me because a setting in the synapse config (server_name) wasn't set, so I
had to read the code of synapse to understand how this well-known endpoint is
served.

All in all it was still doable, but took more manual steps than I expected.

------
driverdan
If all you need is audio and text Mumble works very well. It used to be the
primary audio chat app for gaming but unfortunately the field has become
fragmented with game built in voice chat and platform voice chat (eg Steam).

------
matthberg
Pseudo-related, yet does anyone know of a good replacement for Google Voice?
I've heard Asterisk is good software to look into, yet ideally I'm looking for
a way to self-host or cheaply have a standard phone number which can send SMS
and call normal phones, from multiple devices, ideally with a web interface.

~~~
Coritenst
Twilio

~~~
Coritenst
Using Twilio to make a call forwarding and voice messaging system -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22761712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22761712)

------
jeremija
I've been developing peercalls.com on and off on since 2015. It's an open
source peer to peer WebRTC audio/video calling service, allows the users to
chat, share their desktop and send files (sending files is a little buggy at
the moment, works best in Firefox).

It has gotten a lot of interest in the past month and I noticed a spike in web
traffic so I'm actively working on making it more scalable. I'm planning on
implementing an SFU to support calls with more than 3-4 people. Right now the
peers establish a mesh network and it quickly gets expensive to send video to
more users.

I've also been paying attention to the criticisms of Zoom and other WebRTC
conferencing services and am hoping to implement end to end encryption for
intermediate servers using Insertable Streams once the functionality is
supported in most browsers.

~~~
timeuser
Thanks for sharing. It doesn't seem to work well in Safari on desktop or iOS.
Seemed to connect but if you make the video larger than thumbnail or
fullscreen it either doesn't show or only displays a small sliver.

~~~
jeremija
Thanks for reporting the bug! I thought I'd fixed this issue. Which version of
MacOS/iOS/Safari are you using?

Edit: I just realized that I just hadn't pushed the latest version which
contained this fix. v3.0.17 is up and running now (was v3.0.15). Please let me
know if you continue to experience this or any other issue!

------
primitivesuave
Can anyone comment on the software layers and infrastructure one would have to
build around WebRTC to achieve Zoom-level performance?

------
thomzane
Wiki on this topic:
[https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Remote_Communication](https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Remote_Communication)

Mailing list on this topic:
[https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/remotecommuni...](https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/remotecommunication)

~~~
0x006A
getting a 404 on the list archive at
[https://lists.libreplanet.org/archive/html/remotecommunicati...](https://lists.libreplanet.org/archive/html/remotecommunication)

~~~
thomzane
Brand new list today. No messages. No archive.

~~~
pwinnski
That's the sort of amazing focus on user experience I expect from Free
software, unfortunately.

~~~
okprod
You should contribute to free software packages instead of complaining and
continuing to willingly sell out your agency by using proprietary software.

------
tw04
Webex is free right now, they just haven't really marketed it:

[https://help.webex.com/en-us/n80v1rcb/Cisco-Webex-
Available-...](https://help.webex.com/en-us/n80v1rcb/Cisco-Webex-Available-
Free-in-These-Countries-COVID-19-Response)

Hangouts Meet which I've had bad luck with but others have told me works well
is free:

[https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/helping-
busin...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/helping-businesses-
and-schools-stay-connected-in-response-to-coronavirus)

And MS Teams has a free trial (had good luck with this as well but don't like
the interface as much as webex):

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/03/0...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/03/02/working-remotely-during-challenging-times/)

~~~
thomzane
The Free Software Foundation refers to free as in freedom and not free as in
cost.

~~~
tw04
I'm aware of what the FSF is. Downvoting me because I posted free-as-in-beer
alternatives that aren't open source is childish. They're valid alternatives
for people that don't want to use zoom and entirely relevant to the
conversation.

~~~
tome
It's as though the title was "Try these green ways to generate energy" and you
responded with a list of petrol engines which are painted green. It's not
wrong, it's not unhelpful, per se, but does somewhat miss the point.

------
app4soft
> _Audio chats: 1) Mummble ; 2) Asterisk /SIP_

3) _Walkie Talkie radio_ [0]-like apps?[1,2,3]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkie-
talkie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkie-talkie)

[1] [https://github.com/murtaza98/Walkie-
Talkie](https://github.com/murtaza98/Walkie-Talkie)

[2] [https://github.com/js-labs/WalkieTalkie](https://github.com/js-
labs/WalkieTalkie)

[3] [https://github.com/dhammikamare/android-walkie-
talkie](https://github.com/dhammikamare/android-walkie-talkie)

------
saagarjha
Meanwhile Zoom uses a bunch of open-source software without the required
attribution…

~~~
okprod
Report to the license holder/s so they can start compliance.

------
DevKoala
There is a reason Zoom has been adopted the way it has; the overall user
experience, do not confuse with UI, has the least amount of friction.

Zoom might not be the best in any single category, but I am glad it exists.

~~~
oska
> There is a reason Zoom has been adopted the way it has

The reason is that people do not generally think _philosophically_ or
strategically about the software choices they make. The FSF does and, time and
time again, their deep consideration has proven prescient. It will be the case
with Zoom too.

~~~
DevKoala
Philosophically? Strategically? Company employees are rejecting the
alternatives. For example, SpaceX had to ban Zoom because employees kept using
their own subscriptions.

I agree that privacy and security are not negotiable, but unless you ban the
tool, you cannot force your employees to not use it, there are no better
alternatives from their perspective. We have all lived through Skype,
Hangouts, Webex, GotoMeeting, etc. They all failed at delivering the
experience Zoom delivers.

------
kdrag0n
I wish replacements like these would be practical, but the problem is that
they all have flaws for many use cases, while Zoom just works.

Jitsi Meet is the best I've found so far, but even that has some issues — I
did a quick test with myself and the Android client wasn't able to send or
receive audio. It also doesn't have any notion of a "host", which is normally
good, but it doesn't work for a school setting where participants can't be
trusted to not kick others.

------
chevman
Another vote for Cisco Webex here.

Work at a large Fortune 10 company and have tried all the major players (I
think) - Google, Teams, Skype, Zoom, GotoMeeting, Webex, Join.me, etc.

Webex seems to be the least worst and is fairly reliable and generally works
everywhere under all kinds of load (we have meetings that range from a few
folks to multiple hundreds with no issues).

Definitely not the prettiest software but it gets the job done.

------
deminature
Jitsi is the primarily recommended alternative video conferencing tool here,
which hasn't had anywhere near the security scrutiny that Zoom has had. I'd
prefer to use the tool that we understand is moderately secure, though flawed,
rather than the tool that is a security unknown.

It seems a little much to recommend Jitsi as 'better', when nobody is really
sure of that.

~~~
joecot
Jitsi Meet runs on your own server and lets you videoconference using just
your browser and its built in support for WebRTC. That means it gets to
leverage the readily available and easily understood security of:

* Traditional Web Servers (Apache 2 or nginx)

* https/ssl

* modern web browsers

Running a videoconference software that just works in your browser over https
solves a large majority of security concerns. The video and voice is encrypted
over SSL between the clients and the server. It's not end to end encrypted
because that's not really possible, but the only place its unencrypted is in
your browser and on the server you own and control. If you don't trust Jitsi's
ability to password protect rooms, you could put normal http password
authentication in front of your jitsi install -- which would break the mobile
app but work just fine in your browser.

Lots of the concerns of Zoom's security are resolved by using readily
available standards and software instead of depending on proprietary black box
solutions that turn out to send encryption keys through china.

EDIT: As kardos notes below the video actually runs over udp on port 10000 so
it is not encrypted over https. It looks like video is encrypted[1] but I'm
unclear what method it's encrypted.

1\. See Security section of Readme [https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-
meet](https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet)

~~~
kardos
The web app runs on TCP/443 and benefits from your Let's Encrypt cert. Jitsi
also exposes UDP/10000 for receiving streams from clients, which doesn't go
through apache/nginx. So what does it do for encryption there?

~~~
joecot
Fair enough. I just firewalled 10000 and tried talking to a friend and it does
not work. The web app indeed runs over 443 but all the video conferencing is
done over UDP. However WebRTC is always encrypted. So add on a 4th well tested
piece of tech being utilized.

[https://webrtc-security.github.io/](https://webrtc-security.github.io/)

~~~
kardos
Yeah, I'm not really suggesting that they failed entirely to encrypt the UDP
traffic. But I am curious if what they have done has been scrutinized
recently. Jitsi was formed in 2003 according to Wikipedia, there could be
outdated choices in there somewhere. That they use widely deployed tech is not
really enough, we've just seen that Zoom is using ECB mode when they should
not, etc.

------
leke
I recently tried Jami and think it was a great user experience. I love its
decentralized nature, but just have nobody to use it with. I'm now using
Discord and think its new screen sharing feature is very handy for lessons.
The good thing about Discord is that its very popular.

~~~
thomzane
Discord is nonfree. BigBlueButton is good for classes and screensharing.

------
ruffrey
asterisk is an amazing, underrated stack of technology

~~~
dsr_
I managed a set of Asterisk PBXen for about ten years. They're extremely
capable.

To get full use of it back then, using high-quality hardware SIP phones was a
necessity. These days I think that in-browser phones will work very well for
most people.

Interconnection with telcos went from unsanctioned to orderable to being
widely marketed during that time. If you know what you're doing you can save a
lot of money. If you would prefer to have someone else do the work, the
virtual PBX vendors are pretty good.

------
okprod
All these downvotes make me sad. I guess we're in a world where people turn
off their Alexa for sensitive phone calls instead of choosing not to have an
Alexa device in the first place.

