Comment by saurik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by saurik | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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