# FOSS video conferencing software?



## willie (May 2, 2015)

I'm looking for multi-person video conference software comparable to Google Hangout, that must be FOSS and self-hostable.  Any suggestions?  Someone on irc suggested talky.io which appears to be non-FOSS but uses a FOSS webRTC library.  WebRTC does seem like the way to go, as opposed to requring a client install.  I'm also aware of video chat programs like linphone that are FOSS but are point-to-point, and I need something that handles many participants.

Please don't suggest anything non-FOSS (except for comparison purposes), as that is an absolute requirement for this project.  It is ok if relatively high server resources are needed, since it's for a short term event so we can spin up a big Linode or something if we have to.  Thanks for any ideas!


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## souen (May 2, 2015)

Subrosa maybe? Uses Node.js and webRTC, server requires MySQL.

Tox is experimental, not sure if groupchat supports video yet, audio is supported.


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## KMyers (May 2, 2015)

Take a look at http://bigbluebutton.org/


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## HalfEatenPie (May 3, 2015)

It's gonna be hard to find something that's FOSS and will compare up to Google Hangout (my opinion anyways... since Google has invested so much resources into Hangout that a Free and open-Source project usually lacks).  

However, I don't know if this will fit the bill nor if this is what you're looking for...  But from what I can tell (by reading the descriptions) Jitsi should be it.  I don't know if the video/audio is through the XMPP Protocol since that protocol itself is mostly for text (iirc anyways), but it's a supported feature.

Good luck and definitely keep us updated please!


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## joepie91 (May 3, 2015)

HalfEatenPie said:


> It's gonna be hard to find something that's FOSS and will compare up to Google Hangout (my opinion anyways... since Google has invested so much resources into Hangout that a Free and open-Source project usually lacks).
> 
> However, I don't know if this will fit the bill nor if this is what you're looking for...  But from what I can tell (by reading the descriptions) Jitsi should be it.  I don't know if the video/audio is through the XMPP Protocol since that protocol itself is mostly for text (iirc anyways), but it's a supported feature.
> 
> Good luck and definitely keep us updated please!


Unfortunately, Jitsi is extremely buggy...

EDIT: Audio/video *is* over XMPP - there are some XMPP extensions (XEPs) for that, like Jingle. Theoretically any client could support it.


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## k0nsl (May 3, 2015)

Subrosa is decent. It works okay. I've got a self-hosted solution put up for a group of people because we got tired of Skype and it's shenanigans. We mostly text chat, though. So IRC would've been enough for that...but people wanted something else. So in the end, Subrosa was the choice. It has been running without issues for me


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## HalfEatenPie (May 3, 2015)

k0nsl said:


> Subrosa is decent. It works okay. I've got a self-hosted solution put up for a group of people because we got tired of Skype and it's shenanigans. We mostly text chat, though. So IRC would've been enough for that...but people wanted something else. So in the end, Subrosa was the choice. It has been running without issues for me


So...  You use it in production but it's just decent and okay?  Got any details as to why it's just okay instead of "freaking awesome"? 



joepie91 said:


> Unfortunately, Jitsi is extremely buggy...
> 
> EDIT: Audio/video *is* over XMPP - there are some XMPP extensions (XEPs) for that, like Jingle. Theoretically any client could support it.


Hm.  I haven't seen it be extremely buggy but then again I haven't really used it much.  A long time ago I used to use it with an old installation of OpenFire and it worked (didn't test the video since I don't really use XMPP anyways).  

So honestly I'd probably take your comment over my own , however Jitsi has worked fine for me so idk.


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## joepie91 (May 3, 2015)

HalfEatenPie said:


> So...  You use it in production but it's just decent and okay?  Got any details as to why it's just okay instead of "freaking awesome"?
> 
> Hm.  I haven't seen it be extremely buggy but then again I haven't really used it much.  A long time ago I used to use it with an old installation of OpenFire and it worked (didn't test the video since I don't really use XMPP anyways).
> 
> So honestly I'd probably take your comment over my own , however Jitsi has worked fine for me so idk.


The problem with Jitsi is that it works for great for some people, and not at all for others, no matter what they do, for no obvious reason. On top of that it's Java (ie. a resource hog), and the UI is just plain bad, unless that has changed...


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## k0nsl (May 3, 2015)

I have seen some issues, did not note them all. The most annoying one was auth tag mismatch, so sending messages to that user would be impossible. We tried debugging it using: 


debugResetConv()
In our browsers whilst in conversation. It did not solve a thing. According to the developer/s this is very rare.

Okay, okay. It was a understatement to say it was "okay"! It is pretty darn great  



HalfEatenPie said:


> So...  You use it in production but it's just decent and okay?  Got any details as to why it's just okay instead of "freaking awesome"?
> 
> Hm.  I haven't seen it be extremely buggy but then again I haven't really used it much.  A long time ago I used to use it with an old installation of OpenFire and it worked (didn't test the video since I don't really use XMPP anyways).
> 
> So honestly I'd probably take your comment over my own , however Jitsi has worked fine for me so idk.


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## willie (May 5, 2015)

Thanks, I'll look into these and someone else also mentioned Jitsi, which I've been looking into a little.  Ideally the program should be able to broadcast to a lot of simultaneous clients, like 100's (probably not 1000's).  Is that likely to be an obstacle, given enough server resources?


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## raindog308 (May 6, 2015)

k0nsl said:


> we got tired of Skype and it's shenanigans.


What shenanigans?


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## k0nsl (May 6, 2015)

Lack of privacy, for one thing. I don't trust Skype one bit when it comes to privacy.



raindog308 said:


> What shenanigans?


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## drmike (May 6, 2015)

k0nsl said:


> Lack of privacy, for one thing. I don't trust Skype one bit when it comes to privacy.


http://rt.com/usa/gallagher-nsa-microsoft-skype-653/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2014/08/14/skype-has-a-security-problem-with-leaking-chats/

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=skype+ip+resolver


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