Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Together: New version of Jami (alternative to Zoom and Jitsi)

jami.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 48 posts

Re: Together: New version of Jami (alternative to Zoom and Jitsi)

#11

Post by riedel »

hda111 wrote: post #5

How can there be an iOS app? I read that Apple doesn’t allow GPL apps in their store.

Isn't it more like that their itunes terms of service violate the GPL by imposing additional restrictions through the terms of service? [1] Actually learned about it the first time. How many people buying iphones actually aware of this? Never seen much ranting in the FOSS community either. Guess the fight for free software is long lost, if app store monopolies are not torn down soon.

[1]https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store...

Re: Together: New version of Jami (alternative to Zoom and Jitsi)

#12

Post by riedel »

firloop wrote: post #10
hda111 wrote: post #5

How can there be an iOS app? I read that Apple doesn’t allow GPL apps in their store.

Just because a piece of code is licensed under GPL doesn’t mean that the copyright owner(s) can’t license the code under another license, aka the license to Apple. The issue comes when an entity is using GPL-ed code that they don’t also own the copyright to.

According to the iTunes page it is licensed under GPL [1]. So in this case apple would be violating the GPL by distributing it under their terms of service (which in turn would then probably be a violation by Savoir-faire Linux for uploading it). The question then is, who except for the copyright holder could really enforce the GPL.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/ring-a-gnu-package/id130695105...

Re: Together: New version of Jami (alternative to Zoom and Jitsi)

#13

Post by randomsearch »

altdatathrow wrote: post #6
the-dude wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well does the quality of a videoconference scale with the number of call participants?

That's not a comparable question. Peer-to-peer bandwidth requirements for a single user increases linearly with the number of participants while a client-server model is essentially flat regardless of the number of participants.

That can’t possibly be true. Even if the server integrates all in bound streams into one, doing so takes a non-negligible amount of additional time per user, surely.

Re: Together: New version of Jami (alternative to Zoom and Jitsi)

#16

Post by babuskov »

randomsearch wrote: post #13
altdatathrow wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a comparable question. Peer-to-peer bandwidth requirements for a single user increases linearly with the number of participants while a client-server model is essentially flat regardless of the number of participants.

That can’t possibly be true. Even if the server integrates all in bound streams into one, doing so takes a non-negligible amount of additional time per user, surely.

The person you replied to was talking about bandwidth, not CPU load.

Imagine a user that only has enough bandwidth for a single stream. If there was a server integrating all other user streams into one, that user would be able to watch it without much problem.

Unless, the clients are built in such way that they down-scale the resolution to part of the screen it would occupy on target computers (based on number of participants) before sending video data. Is any software doing this currently?

> Even if the server integrates all in bound streams into one, doing so takes a non-negligible amount of additional time per user, surely.

Integration has to happen at one point. Whether a server does it or each user's computer.

Re: Together: New version of Jami (alternative to Zoom and Jitsi)

#17

Post by quadrangle »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #14

this is free but is it open source? I could only find an option to download via the package manager but no links to the source or how to build it myself.

Jami is a GNU project backed by the Free Software Foundation and distributed under a GPLv3 license

But yeah, it is very weird then that they don't seem to make it easy to get the source. Bad design of the website. Under "contribute" there seems to be links that will get to the source https://jami.net/contribute/

Re: Together: New version of Jami (alternative to Zoom and Jitsi)

#18

Post by babuskov »

altdatathrow wrote: post #6
the-dude wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well does the quality of a videoconference scale with the number of call participants?

That's not a comparable question. Peer-to-peer bandwidth requirements for a single user increases linearly with the number of participants while a client-server model is essentially flat regardless of the number of participants.

> Peer-to-peer bandwidth requirements for a single user increases linearly with the number of participants while a client-server model is essentially flat regardless of the number of participants.

True if the server integrates all incoming streams into one. However, in that case, CPU requirements on the server also grow on linear basis.

An interesting solution would be one where each client downscales the resolution of their stream to the actual space it would take on target computers. That way the per-user bandwidth would remain constant as smaller uploads would probably be enough to offset overhead of having multiple incoming streams (of course, each incoming stream already downscaled by sender and thus requiring only a portion bandwidth).

Re: Together: New version of Jami (alternative to Zoom and Jitsi)

#20

Post by jtbayly »

I tried this out today for the first time on my iPhone and Mac with a couple other people. The iOS app kept crashing, and I couldn’t figure out how to use the same account on my computer and at various times either the video or audio or both weren’t working for somebody in the call. Gave up in the end, sadly.
Post reply on HN