Magnus Enger <magnus@enger.priv.no>
Sorry for being unclear about this. Google Hangout is a video-conference-thingamajig, so what I had in mind was establishing an audio-visual link to the lucky people in Thane, just for the fun of it. I don't believe IRC works very well with audio and visuals, yet... ;-)
I had this explained to me on IRC. I outlined the alternatives as far as I know them, but as my eyesight isn't great, video conferencing isn't my speciality. Anyway, I thought Thane couldn't sustain an audio-visual link because the conference isn't being streamed?
And yes, Google Hangout is a Google service, yes it does require download and installation of a closed plugin-thingy. But on the plus-side, I know several potential GBSD'ers use and it works quite well (even with video from several participants, as opposed to Skype). It was always meant as a fun add-on to the main event and participating is in no way required to be part of the fun that is GBSD.
Yeah, but it means that FLOSS developers that are also FLOSS users get treated as second-class citizens and that's not a good thing. I'd prefer to offer FLOSS users equality if we can!
I'm very interested in learning about FLOSS alternatives for videoconferencing, though!
I've been told that Jitsi.org is the best at the moment (client download needed, but it's open unlike Google's, and you need to register on something like iptel.org, but you have a choice unlike Google and could even run your own server if you wanted) but I've yet to try it other than for a test. Longer-term, I expect MUJi (Multi-User Jingle) to be the way ahead. I think Google's VOIP service uses Jingle, so they could probably have pushed MUJi on, but they seemed to do the private Hangouts service instead. I guess locking people in isn't evil by their definition. :-/ Anyone got more experience with FLOSS videoconferencing? Hope that helps, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. http://koha-community.org supporter, web and LMS developer, statistician. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha