Comment by KronisLV | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KronisLV | Hacker News Reader

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> Offer a comparable alternative, then

Here's a few:

  - https://meet.jit.si/ which you can also self host https://github.com/jitsi
  - https://bigbluebutton.org/ which you can also self host https://github.com/bigbluebutton

I've found that they're especially useful, when integrated with Rocket.Chat https://rocket.chat/ which you can also self host https://github.com/RocketChat

That way you have an experience that's a lot like Slack/Teams, with pretty good support for chat, reactions, file uploads, discussions, making quotes etc., while also being able to start video/audio calls with the press of a single button.

Of course, if that's too many platforms, Rocket.Chat also supports WebRTC, albeit the UX was a bit less stellar when i last tried it.

Alternatively, there is also Nextcloud Talk, which can integrate with your instance of Nextcloud and allow for file sharing, chatting etc., though personally i found Rocket.Chat to be more usable: https://nextcloud.com/talk/

Regardless, those are some very competent options which allow all the data to remain on your own servers.

AdmiralAsshat's point was that all of the alternatives sucked because they were difficult or flakey to use: they weren't "comparable". Notably, the alternatives being mentioned as non-comparable weren't even trying to be local: they were remote service/ (which if you think Zoom is particularly bad, is still an improvement) built by giant companies that have tons of resources to have an army working on just these tools... and they all still sucked.

You then responded to this comment by just matter-of-factly asserting that you had the list of missing alternatives... but, really, you are simply hijacking the thread to point out that alternatives exist "which allows all the data to remain on your own servers"; but, you provide no evidence or argument to address whether these products are actually "comparable" (to the point where it just feels like you didn't even understand the point being made) in a way that, say, Google Hangouts--which is the product Google created WebRTC for!--isn't.

I use https://meet.jit.si/ daily and can confirm it is easier to use than Zoom or Hangouts.

No nag screens trying to get me to install desktop clients or trying to get me to create an account or give up personal information.

It just works.

Like all apps that are "just" WebRTC, jitsi doesn't work well on networks with persistently high packet loss. A VC app needs to work reliably 99.99% of the time, not just 99% of the time.

Agreed. I suggested Jitsi to a few university professors early in the pandemic last year. They used it for a good 6 months, with classes of about 20 people, 2-3 times a week.

The experience of not having to login and fuss with accounts was great. However, when everyone had their cameras on + screen sharing, audio quality typically suffered.

These professors since moved on to use Zoom and it’s way more stable. I don’t like Zoom generally (for many of the reasons noted in this thread), but it’s definitely reliable.

Galène[1], which is FLOSS, was specifically developed by the University of Paris for the purpose you're describing.

The UI is terrible, I'll admit that, but the performance and scalability is better than Zoom.

[1] https://galene.org/

This is basically trading one reliability issue for another. The one chosen by the professor is reliable in excluding some students, the ones who actually care about their privacy, from the conferences.

Jitsi works nowhere near as well as Zoom or any other VC for me. More than once we've had to go back to zoom when it drops our connection every other minute.

I disagree that alternatives are flakey or difficult to use. If anything it's the opposite. I use BBB daily (and sometimes Jitsi) with a very varied group (including people who never had a computer before) and the results are much better than with Zoom. Maybe Zoom is intuitive if you grew up with computers and with bad software, but honestly the quasi-requirement of installation (it's non-trivial to use the web version) and the dark patterns galore are hard to navigate for non-techy people.

I think the OP meant options that are as "easy" as click on a link and join a meeting. I use BBB and Mumble but there are others I know who would never know how to set up their own instance or even what github is.

This is why multiple companies exist to sell you one-click hosted instances of these without lock-in.

Yeah, the press release https://datenschutz-hamburg.de/pressemitteilungen/2021/08/20... mentions that (in addition to a nameless internal videoconferencing tool) Hamburg uses Dataport as a vendor, which seems to imply Jitsi Meet: https://video.openws.de/

jitsi is exactly that, been using it for the whole pandemic for meetings for my team of 10 ppl, never had an issue.

Jitsi won't consistently work at scale and is (like most webrtc only applications) a terror to debug. You can basically forget about using it with someone that has issues.

Yes, there are many self-hosted options out there. https://github.com/meetecho/janus-gateway works well for multi-party video with up to about 15 users in a room assuming everyone has a reasonably reliable connection.

Janus caught my attention when I was looking at WebRTC servers (SFUs) last year, but I couldn't find any good FOSS web apps for it. Do any exist?

It is a complete video conferencing package by itself, so you generally don't need anything else. It just works out of the box to give you multi-party video conferencing across multiple rooms.

We use it in our (closed source) online tutoring / whiteboard software, and it is pretty easy to integrate, by taking their videoroom sample code.

What is it you're looking for?

I didn't see a video conference web app. I did find the Video Room on the demos page, but it doesn't look suitable for real-world use. I didn't notice anything better in a quick scan of the janus-gateway github page, nor in debian's list of janus* packages.

Perhaps I'm overlooking something?

BBB was a mess. It's security and privacy may be great on paper (open source, self hosted). But that's the lawyer's side.

In practice: BBB had server-side mute, so your muted microphone would still send audio to the server. Servers could be compromised through uploaded documents (processed by LibreOffice).

The biggest problems might have been fixed by now. But self hosting half baked software isn't an alternative to most.

Element, too!

Element actually uses jitsi.

Oh right, they're just planning to get voice and video working over matrix natively in the semi near future

it’s working already actually (in alpha) :)

I like your line reasoning… but the problem with video conferencing isn’t really technical- IMO it’s all about the User experience (UX). Zoom by far beats the competition in this regard. It’s UI could be better but compared the mess of competitors it’s far more straightforward … just my opinion…

I don't think Zoom "beats" anyone in UX, especially with the dark patterns. They're just popular. I've seen countless times hundreds of people unable to activate the "Computer Audio" option on company-wide meetings because it's in a secondary tab with zero-affordance. Recently they made it very hard to find the "gallery mode" icon (you have to hover a dark area). They also make it borderline impossible to open it on the browser, forcing multiple reloads or whatnot (the method it changes all the time). Honestly Jitsi, BBB and even Teams are all better IMO.

One of my pet-peeves with the zoom UX is that it always switches to full-screen mode if someone is sharing the screen. This is particularly annoying if you are also using the participant or chat windows (because there's voting or chat messages etc.) and if you are switching between different presenters (meaning it switches again and again to full screen). Why can't it respect my decision to not have a full-screen window?!

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