[RFC] Finding a conference call solution for the CCC

[Paul Menzel]

Dear coreboot folks,


At the last coreboot community meeting (CCC) [1][2], some participants
couldn’t here what other participants were saying with the current
conference call solution Discord [3].

As this greatly reduces the productivity, the conclusion was to find a
different solution, as this problem has been present since the
beginning and Discord doesn’t seem to be able to fix this.

So either somebody gets in contact with Discord, and they promise to
work on a solution for the next meeting, or we need to find a different
solution.

The requirements are.

1. Working conference call (audio) functionality
2. No registration necessary
3. Clients for all operating systems (packages at best in distribution
archive), or at least a Web client that runs with Mozilla Firefox (ESR
and last version), and Google Chromium (last version).

Chris(?) offered to set up a Mumble [4] server. Clients for all
operating systems are supposed to be available.

Also Tox was mentioned [5], which doesn’t feature a Web client, as far
as I can see.

So if you know of a solution, please tell us, so that technical
problems won’t spoil the fun of the CCCs.


Thanks,

Paul


[1] https://www.coreboot.org/Coreboot_community_meeting
[2] https://coreboot-meeting.pads.ccc.de/CommunityMeetingTopics?
[3] https://discordapp.com/
[4] https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page
    "Mumble is an open source, low-latency, high quality voice chat
software primarily intended for use while gaming."
[5] https://tox.chat/

[Martin Roth]

We were thinking of switching to the mumble server that Chris Ching has set
up, but it doesn't seem to have any web client or way to work around that.

After looking at a number of solutions, I think the solution we'd like to
try at this point is Blue Jeans - bluejeans.com.  It's actually a paid
service at $120 per year.  I think the biggest advantage here is that it
supports a phone bridge, which makes many of the other features unnecessary.

Upsides:
- Telephone call-in with numbers in many countries:
https://bluejeans.com/numbers
- Native clients for Windows, Linux (RPM), OSX, IOS, and Android.
- Web interface (chrome only - other browsers are being deprecated)
- Maximum of 50 attendees per meeting - I think so far our highest
attendance has been 12 people or so.

Downsides:
- Not a free service - it costs $120 per year per host.  The cost may
increase in the future. They don't offer a discount for open-source
projects or non-profits at this scale.
- Web client only works with chrome/chromium
- Not an open source solution.

Annoyances:
- The native Linux client is only available as an rpm
- Only a single person (email address) can host a meeting.  I'm not sure of
how much an issue this really is - If we schedule the meetings in advance,
and it starts automatically, it may not be a problem.  If the host has to
join before anyone else can talk, that's not so good.

Let me know what you think.
Martin


On Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 6:35 AM, Paul Menzel via coreboot <
[e-mail]> wrote:
> Dear coreboot folks,
>
> At the last coreboot community meeting (CCC) [1][2], some participants
> couldn’t here what other participants were saying with the current
> conference call solution Discord [3].
>
> As this greatly reduces the productivity, the conclusion was to find a
> different solution, as this problem has been present since the
> beginning and Discord doesn’t seem to be able to fix this.
>
> So either somebody gets in contact with Discord, and they promise to
> work on a solution for the next meeting, or we need to find a different
> solution.
>
> The requirements are.
>
> 1. Working conference call (audio) functionality
> 2. No registration necessary
> 3. Clients for all operating systems (packages at best in distribution
> archive), or at least a Web client that runs with Mozilla Firefox (ESR
> and last version), and Google Chromium (last version).
>
> Chris(?) offered to set up a Mumble [4] server. Clients for all
> operating systems are supposed to be available.
>
> Also Tox was mentioned [5], which doesn’t feature a Web client, as far
> as I can see.
>
> So if you know of a solution, please tell us, so that technical
> problems won’t spoil the fun of the CCCs.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paul
>
> [1] https://www.coreboot.org/Coreboot_community_meeting
> [2] https://coreboot-meeting.pads.ccc.de/CommunityMeetingTopics?
> [3] https://discordapp.com/
> [4] https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page
>     "Mumble is an open source, low-latency, high quality voice chat
> software primarily intended for use while gaming."
> [5] https://tox.chat/
> --
> coreboot mailing list: [e-mail]
> https://www.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot