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We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

sfconservancy.org

41–50 of 52 posts

Re: We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

#41
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm usually opposed to these GPT summaries, but this post definitely needed it.

As usual, the ChatGPT summary is terrible (). It completely missed the part where you can buy access to their BigBlueButton server by becoming a sustaining member. (Does that let you call non-sustaining members?)

I think this page gives you access:

https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/

() In fairness, I completely missed the part where they even mentioned BigBlueButton until I read the ChatGPT summary and searched the article for the word BigBlueButton, but I’m still not giving ChatGPT the win.

Re: We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

#42
post #29

Why stop at Zoom? Exit Discord too! Remember when FOSS community discussions occurred in archived mailing lists crawled by search engines? How quaint! Now your average project invites everyone to their "Discord server", the discussions equivalent of a black hole.

I will once there is a federated alternative with reasonable feature parity that I can operate an instance of on AWS.

I’m not willing to play security/regression whack-a-mole, so the server needs to be under 10k lines of code, have minimal dependencies and be written in a statically typed language.

Re: We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

#43
post #6

As a Deaf person using sign language, Zoom is essential for virtual meetings as its the only platform I've used that consistently delivers acceptable video performance. Teams suffers from random issues that just crops up out of nowhere eg videos going blank, sudden reductions in bittate, periods of excessive dropped frames, etc. Google's platform (whatever its called these days) struggles to cope with multiple videos…

I hope this isn't rude, but as a hearing person who knows very little about deaf culture, could you please help me understand why signing is preferable to text chatting?

And in a video chat with talking speakers, would you still prefer a sign interpreter, or are automatic captions good enough in that case?

I don't doubt your experiences, I just want to better understand them. As a hearing person, I often find it hard to understanding what people are saying over video chat (of any platform) and much preferable text chats or auto transcripts. But I'm sure that's not the case for everyone...

Re: We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

#44
post #6

As a Deaf person using sign language, Zoom is essential for virtual meetings as its the only platform I've used that consistently delivers acceptable video performance. Teams suffers from random issues that just crops up out of nowhere eg videos going blank, sudden reductions in bittate, periods of excessive dropped frames, etc. Google's platform (whatever its called these days) struggles to cope with multiple videos…

I hope this isn't rude, but as a hearing person who knows very little about deaf culture, could you please help me understand why signing is preferable to text chatting? And in a video chat with talking speakers, would you still prefer a sign interpreter, or are automatic captions good enough in that case? I don't doubt your experiences, I just want to better understand them. As a hearing person, I often find it hard…

As someone who can hear fine and knows basically no sign language, that feels a bit like asking anyone why they prefer video chat to text chat. Text chat is almost always just slower. I can have a day going can and forth with someone over chat, or I can call them up and get the problem sorted in fifteen minutes.

Obviously there's still cases where the discussion is small and specific enough to do over chat, or other cases where slower, asynchronous communication works better because I went to do other things at the same time, there's no one-size-fits-all communication method, but talking (be that via English, ASL, or whatever other language) is very useful to have in one's toolbox!

Re: We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

#45
post #6

As a Deaf person using sign language, Zoom is essential for virtual meetings as its the only platform I've used that consistently delivers acceptable video performance. Teams suffers from random issues that just crops up out of nowhere eg videos going blank, sudden reductions in bittate, periods of excessive dropped frames, etc. Google's platform (whatever its called these days) struggles to cope with multiple videos…

I hope this isn't rude, but as a hearing person who knows very little about deaf culture, could you please help me understand why signing is preferable to text chatting? And in a video chat with talking speakers, would you still prefer a sign interpreter, or are automatic captions good enough in that case? I don't doubt your experiences, I just want to better understand them. As a hearing person, I often find it hard…

A whole lot of people who were born deaf can't read English well.

But even if all participants in a conversation can read and write English, when your native language is some kind of sign language, writing in English is akin to speaking a second language would be for an English-speaker. Possible, but not nearly as convenient as using your native language.

Re: We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

#46
post #21
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? The same can be said with regards to oral communication. People who communicate in sign language do so in a very expressive way, a way that pure text cannot capture. You should go out of your way to experience this for yourself.

My point is that I'm ignorant on the subject but interested and so am asking questions to learn about it.

And you won't get any enlightening information via text chat like this. Go experience sign language.

Re: We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

#47
post #46
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that I'm ignorant on the subject but interested and so am asking questions to learn about it.

And you won't get any enlightening information via text chat like this. Go experience sign language.

The person asked a question with curiosity and you chose not once but twice to respond rudely.

Re: We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

#48
post #6

As a Deaf person using sign language, Zoom is essential for virtual meetings as its the only platform I've used that consistently delivers acceptable video performance. Teams suffers from random issues that just crops up out of nowhere eg videos going blank, sudden reductions in bittate, periods of excessive dropped frames, etc. Google's platform (whatever its called these days) struggles to cope with multiple videos…

Has anyone made the joke to you that "you're on mute" because the camera is off?

Re: We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

#49
post #6

As a Deaf person using sign language, Zoom is essential for virtual meetings as its the only platform I've used that consistently delivers acceptable video performance. Teams suffers from random issues that just crops up out of nowhere eg videos going blank, sudden reductions in bittate, periods of excessive dropped frames, etc. Google's platform (whatever its called these days) struggles to cope with multiple videos…

I do not wish to sound insensitive but is better accessibility the most important consideration in FOSS vs proprietary? The article covers the dangers of certain types of software and why we should not rely on them. It seems to me that particular features in the software itself is beside the point.

Re: We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Meet performance is pretty much up there for me these days. It's very rare that quality degrades for any of the use cases you described. Maybe it's gotten better, who knows.

Google Meets is far behind- even image quality on 1-2 people call is quite low.

We must be using different versions then. We're using it for work, could there be a difference between free and paid versions?
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