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We Call on FOSS Contributors to “Exit Zoom”

95 points by thedeepself 3y ago

hadlock 3y ago
That is possibly the least coherent press release/call to action I've seen in a while. If there is a convincing argument to be had there, it's buried in twelve paragraphs of flowery language.
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - hgsgm 3y ago
    I'm usually opposed to these GPT summaries, but this post definitely needed it.
    - hedora 3y ago
      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/ 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.
karaterobot 3y ago
> A recent analysis showed that it could take up to 30 hours just to read the entirety of Zoom's terms and conditions I wonder whether there's a single human being on Earth who has read the entire T&C word for word. I assume multiple authors drafted and edited specific chunks, so it may even be the case that even the lawyers who wrote it haven't read the full thing, yet users are expected to have done it in some vague but legally binding way.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  > it may even be the case that even the lawyers who wrote it haven't read the full thing idk. I thought lawyers loved billable hours. Maybe some poor intern at some law firm had to spend a few months reading the full thing over and over again until it all made sense to him :p
- pessimizer 3y ago
  If it takes 30 hours to read, it will probably change before you're done reading it.
- grotorea 3y ago
  And how legally binding those T&C really are anyway?
  - greyface- 3y ago
    Probably quite binding, unfortunately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap#United_States
- odensc 3y ago
  They didn't even quote that analysis correctly. It shows that it would take 30 minutes for the average person... big difference there.
kiwijamo 3y ago
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 streams, descending into pixelated messes due to adapting down to incredibly low bitrates and regular dropped frames. Zoom is the only one I've come across that manages up to 25 simultaneous video streams without visible dropped frames and at reasonable resolutions and bitrates. Am keen to know what realistic alternatives there are for virtual meetings for sign language users, delivering quality on par with or at least 'close enough' to Zoom. If theres a OSS solution that can do that out of the box it'd do very well indeed.
- sudobash1 3y ago
  I do software contract work for many blind and low vision people, and they also have had great things to say about Zoom's accessibility.
- appleflaxen 3y ago
  Can you try and comment on meet.jit.si ?
  - yobid20 3y ago
    Jitsi is quite a nightmare to work with, and presents a whole range of challenges and difficulties to use and support. Users often encounter difficulties with connecting, experience unexpected participant drops, struggle with subpar video quality, and face issues with loss of audio and visual streams. Unfortunately, there's also a complete lack of any adequate support tools, making it near impossible to address these concerns effectively. The codebase of Jitsi is quite a tangled tightly coupled mess, exhibiting poor coding practices in Java. As a result, its performance is subpar, and it struggles to scale efficiently, especially in larger conferences. Even achieving consistent performance in smaller gatherings can prove to be a challenge. With respect to deployment, thats also another complicated mess. Browser version upgrades also often completely break the platform, requiring waiting for fixes then having to update and redeploy your entire system end to end because, as mentioned above, its very highly tightly coupled. You simply cannot compare this to native apps like zoom or teams. While Jitsi might suffice for casual interactions among a small circle of friends, it pales in comparison to more reliable platforms like Zoom or even Discord. For those seeking a dependable alternative to platforms like Zoom, don't even bother with Jitsi as it falls far far short and will be a massive time and support money sink for your corporation.
kierank 3y ago
Sure, when there's a consistent experience between browsers with decent echo-cancellation amongst other audio processing I'll be happy to move. I don't want to get stuck on lowest common denominator WebRTC, that pales in comparison with a native application like Zoom.
philipwhiuk 3y ago
I thought Jitsi was the FOSS alternative. Surprised there's a new FOSS contender.
- djbusby 3y ago
  BBB has been around, and usable, since at least 2013.
beckingz 3y ago
"The proprietary and for-profit nature of Zoom also has made it subject to multiple cases of algorithmic bias. The once esoteric seeming issues are now a stark reality." As a huge fan of FOSS, I gotta say this is ridiculous to include here.
causality0 3y ago
I actually had to read this whole thing twice because the first time I thought they genuinely wrote all that without even suggesting a single FOSS alternative to zoom. They don't actually suggest one so much as effervescently mention one (BigBlueButton) near the end without describing it at all or even indicating that, yes, this is the what they want people to drop Zoom for. No wonder there's no author listed, this is one of the worst attempts at effective communication and persuasion I've ever seen. You can't sit there and say Zoom sucks without telling us why the alternative is better, especially when 95% of peoples' experience in the matter is that Zoom is an order of magnitude better than everything else they've tried. We in the FOSS community need to stop being worse than our stereotypes.
- JoRyGu 3y ago
  Coincidentally, difficult to understand and largely ineffective is exactly how I'd describe the FOSS virtual meeting software I've used in the past.
troupe 3y ago
I use WebEx, but I can use my video conferencing equipment to call into Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Amazon Chime because they are all interoperable. This is not the case with Zoom. Standards exist for video conferencing, but Zoom refuses to work with them simply because they think their market position will allow it.
pengaru 3y ago
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.
- kibibu 3y ago
  Strongly agree. Doesn't have to be mailing lists, but any persistent forum is better than discord
- hedora 3y ago
  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.
- hadlock 3y ago
  Discord replaced Mumble, which arguably is mostly the same product, just less flashy (and no browser rendering)
kitanata 3y ago
[flagged]

95 points by thedeepself 3y ago

That is possibly the least coherent press release/call to action I've seen in a while. If there is a convincing argument to be had there, it's buried in twelve paragraphs of flowery language.

teaearlgraycold 3y ago
[flagged]
- hgsgm 3y ago
  I'm usually opposed to these GPT summaries, but this post definitely needed it.
  - hedora 3y ago
    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/ 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.

karaterobot 3y ago

> A recent analysis showed that it could take up to 30 hours just to read the entirety of Zoom's terms and conditions I wonder whether there's a single human being on Earth who has read the entire T&C word for word. I assume multiple authors drafted and edited specific chunks, so it may even be the case that even the lawyers who wrote it haven't read the full thing, yet users are expected to have done it in some vague but legally binding way.

codetrotter 3y ago
> it may even be the case that even the lawyers who wrote it haven't read the full thing idk. I thought lawyers loved billable hours. Maybe some poor intern at some law firm had to spend a few months reading the full thing over and over again until it all made sense to him :p
pessimizer 3y ago
If it takes 30 hours to read, it will probably change before you're done reading it.
grotorea 3y ago
And how legally binding those T&C really are anyway?
- greyface- 3y ago
  Probably quite binding, unfortunately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap#United_States
odensc 3y ago
They didn't even quote that analysis correctly. It shows that it would take 30 minutes for the average person... big difference there.

kiwijamo 3y ago

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 streams, descending into pixelated messes due to adapting down to incredibly low bitrates and regular dropped frames. Zoom is the only one I've come across that manages up to 25 simultaneous video streams without visible dropped frames and at reasonable resolutions and bitrates. Am keen to know what realistic alternatives there are for virtual meetings for sign language users, delivering quality on par with or at least 'close enough' to Zoom. If theres a OSS solution that can do that out of the box it'd do very well indeed.

sudobash1 3y ago
I do software contract work for many blind and low vision people, and they also have had great things to say about Zoom's accessibility.
appleflaxen 3y ago
Can you try and comment on meet.jit.si ?
- yobid20 3y ago
  Jitsi is quite a nightmare to work with, and presents a whole range of challenges and difficulties to use and support. Users often encounter difficulties with connecting, experience unexpected participant drops, struggle with subpar video quality, and face issues with loss of audio and visual streams. Unfortunately, there's also a complete lack of any adequate support tools, making it near impossible to address these concerns effectively. The codebase of Jitsi is quite a tangled tightly coupled mess, exhibiting poor coding practices in Java. As a result, its performance is subpar, and it struggles to scale efficiently, especially in larger conferences. Even achieving consistent performance in smaller gatherings can prove to be a challenge. With respect to deployment, thats also another complicated mess. Browser version upgrades also often completely break the platform, requiring waiting for fixes then having to update and redeploy your entire system end to end because, as mentioned above, its very highly tightly coupled. You simply cannot compare this to native apps like zoom or teams. While Jitsi might suffice for casual interactions among a small circle of friends, it pales in comparison to more reliable platforms like Zoom or even Discord. For those seeking a dependable alternative to platforms like Zoom, don't even bother with Jitsi as it falls far far short and will be a massive time and support money sink for your corporation.

kierank 3y ago

Sure, when there's a consistent experience between browsers with decent echo-cancellation amongst other audio processing I'll be happy to move. I don't want to get stuck on lowest common denominator WebRTC, that pales in comparison with a native application like Zoom.

philipwhiuk 3y ago

I thought Jitsi was the FOSS alternative. Surprised there's a new FOSS contender.

djbusby 3y ago
BBB has been around, and usable, since at least 2013.

beckingz 3y ago

"The proprietary and for-profit nature of Zoom also has made it subject to multiple cases of algorithmic bias. The once esoteric seeming issues are now a stark reality." As a huge fan of FOSS, I gotta say this is ridiculous to include here.

causality0 3y ago

I actually had to read this whole thing twice because the first time I thought they genuinely wrote all that without even suggesting a single FOSS alternative to zoom. They don't actually suggest one so much as effervescently mention one (BigBlueButton) near the end without describing it at all or even indicating that, yes, this is the what they want people to drop Zoom for. No wonder there's no author listed, this is one of the worst attempts at effective communication and persuasion I've ever seen. You can't sit there and say Zoom sucks without telling us why the alternative is better, especially when 95% of peoples' experience in the matter is that Zoom is an order of magnitude better than everything else they've tried. We in the FOSS community need to stop being worse than our stereotypes.

JoRyGu 3y ago
Coincidentally, difficult to understand and largely ineffective is exactly how I'd describe the FOSS virtual meeting software I've used in the past.

troupe 3y ago

I use WebEx, but I can use my video conferencing equipment to call into Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Amazon Chime because they are all interoperable. This is not the case with Zoom. Standards exist for video conferencing, but Zoom refuses to work with them simply because they think their market position will allow it.

pengaru 3y ago

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.

kibibu 3y ago
Strongly agree. Doesn't have to be mailing lists, but any persistent forum is better than discord
hedora 3y ago
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.
hadlock 3y ago
Discord replaced Mumble, which arguably is mostly the same product, just less flashy (and no browser rendering)

kitanata 3y ago

[flagged]