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From the Jitsi Community Forum: "All we can say at this point is that our team is not affected by the Slack deal."

Jitsi, an open source audio and video platform for conferencing, was bought and further developed by Atlassian. Some code from Jitsi is in Stride. Was is part of the purchase? Are the Atlassian developers still working for Atlassian? Are they working for Slack now? Or have they been let go?

Check out Jitsi Meet, the open sourced video conference product.

Jitsi, an open source audio and video platform for conferencing, was bought and further developed by Atlassian. Some code from Jitsi is in Stride. Was is part of the purchase? Are the Atlassian developers still working for Atlassian? Are they working for Slack now? Or have they been let go?

Check out Jitsi Meet, the open sourced video conference product.

Jitsi.org

I tried visiting the first result in Google Search, and it gave me error 502 Bad Gateway. Not a good sign.

Second try: "Jitsi" on Wikipedia. The article states that Jitsi is a native client application, not a server. Therefore, it would need to be used with some sort of server software and a hosting account. It states that Jitsi is available for Linux (by which I assume it means X11/Linux), Android, Windows, and macOS, which would exclude members of our community whose primary device is an iPhone, iPad, or Chromebook. It states that supports IRC and XMPP for text, SIP for voice, and proprietary services of major IM networks (MSNP, OSCAR, and YMSG). Which of these protocols A. have a server available to the public and B. support server-side storage of older messages and attachments?

Don't forget Jitsi, although screen sharing is still quite buggy.

The folks at Jitsi are trying to realise your vision. I've used it and it's got some rough edges, but it really hopes to be a FOSS, standards-based Skype/Facetime killer.

Before Skype was sold to MS, they were working on a way to implement encryption. Guess what the first thing MS ditched after purchasing?

I use Jitsi/XMPP, personally.

https://meet.jit.si/ for the win!

or for a cross platform stand alone client visit http://www.jitsi.org/

https://jitsi.org/ It looks quite good. this may be a blessing. Microsoft recently put word out about "bots" guiding you on things like vacations, products and so forth. in other words, Microsoft, is using Skype to anayze your communications and push ads. Not that I'm surprised. MS has historically been friendly to Linux and only recently even remotely tried to show some level of cooperation. MS SQL Server for Linux was an interesting step, but of course they can pull the pug at any time, which given this news (okay, not news...I've been wondering about this for awhile). Of course Android is killing MS on tablets and phones. Anyway, we've been patient enough. Time to try something different. Plus, did we really want Microsoft's spyware (ahem, "enhanced features") running on our Linux workstations? This could be a blessing in disguise telling us to give up hopes on MS and embrace the superior software projects in our grasp and encourage our friends/family to do the same.

Jitsi

Try Jitsi's WEBRTC alternative Videobridge. It rocks!

https://meet.jit.si/

Jitsi itself is pretty cool too.

http://www.jitsi.org/

Jitsi's Videobridge is already in production and works great. WebRTC done right and under the MIT/X license too!

https://meet.jit.si/

http://www.jitsi.org/

jitsi.org
http://jitsi.org/

Jitsi is an audio/video Internet phone and instant messenger written in Java. It supports some of the most popular instant messaging and telephony protocols such as SIP, Jabber/XMPP (and hence Facebook and Google Talk), AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger.

The development of Jitsi started at the University of Strasbourg, France. Originally the project was known as SIP Communicator. Throughout the years our community has grown to include members and contributors from Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Japan, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, UK, USA, and others.

Jitsi is based on the OSGi architecture using the Felix implementation from Apache. This makes it very extensible and particularly developer friendly.

You guys should really be using Jitsi internally and a local deployment of http://meet.jit.si for communicating with random customers who shouldn't have to install a third party client just to talk to you.

Doesn't JITSI already do that? Encrypted videochat, desktop sharing, the whole deal.

Does this count? https://play.google.com/store/...
Or maybe this (Jitsi)? https://download.jitsi.org/jit...
Or this (Talkonaut)? http://talkonaut.android.infor...

Why not just use Jitsi for both?

http://jitsi.org/

Jitsi looks realy nice. I want to try it myself when i need videoconferencing later this year. There is also Jitsi videobridge which you can deploy on your server and use Jitsi meet web client to connect to it. Or you can use 3rd party maintained instalation of videobridge available at https://meet.jit.si/

Jitsi looks realy nice. I want to try it myself when i need videoconferencing later this year. There is also Jitsi videobridge which you can deploy on your server and use Jitsi meet web client to connect to it. Or you can use 3rd party maintained instalation of videobridge available at https://meet.jit.si/

Jitsi looks realy nice. I want to try it myself when i need videoconferencing later this year. There is also Jitsi videobridge which you can deploy on your server and use Jitsi meet web client to connect to it. Or you can use 3rd party maintained instalation of videobridge available at https://meet.jit.si/

Why not develop and use technology that protects political engagement and democratic paricipation?

You mean, like modern-day cryptography ?

Specially things like OTR ?
That have perfect foward secrecy, thanks to DHE ? (i.e.: there's no key that could be disclosed to enable decryption of past intercepted communication) ?
That use authentication through Socialist Millionaire (which is keyless, meaning that there's no way to proof that past intercepted communication is authentic) ?
Which simply functions as an overlay, meaning that you can use it as up today above any chat system that you currently already have (Google Talk for example, huh no sorry "Google+ Hangouts" is the name now) so you don't need to sign-up a new chat and ask all your contacts to move to a new service?
Which already available out-of-the-box in a big number of software (like jitsi, adium) or as a plugin in others (like pidgin) ?

And there are numerous other technologies for also protecting e-mail (GPG is an often mentioned example), for protecting voice/video communication (the above mentioned jitsi implements them too), etc.

The tools are there. Some have very easy forms. You just need to get the users used to them.

Add this as reason #2'175 on the long list of why one should definitely use end-to-end encryption.

If you use a well designed end-to-end encryption, that has been validated by cryptologist (think OTR for chat, ZRTP for voice), I doesn't matter what the quality of the underlying link is or if telcos are helping breaking the link.

Best part? These technology can work over your already existing systems (though ZRTP can't work over Skype's voice and video. It only works over SIP or XMPP/Jingle - i.e.: the standards that the whole rest of the internet is using).
So you can OTR encrypt your chats over your Google Talk's XMPP session.

And there are clients supporting them either out-of-the-box (jitsi, adium) or with a plugin (pidgin), over your existing accounts (XMPP like Google Talk, or any random SIP provider).

I get the need to communicate with non-nerds via video chat, but you might want to check out Jitsi, as it does encrypted truly peer-to-peer video chat, and has OTR support built in for the text chat side of things, and will work with existing xmpp accounts. Only drawback I have with it is that it's java (one of the two programs I keep java installed at all for), but generally it's bug-free enough that t hat doesn't cause much issue.

Developers have already gotten on top of this. There are about a half dozen excellent cross-platform SIP applications out there. Jitsi, IMHO, blows away Skype. There is also Blink, despite the name it's good, too. These are the top two and are cross-platform. Use either to connect to either, they both work well.

https://jitsi.org/

However, switch to what is the question?

I quite like Jitsi myself.

From their website: "Jitsi (formerly SIP Communicator) is an audio/video and chat communicator that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber, AIM/ICQ, Windows Live, Yahoo! and many other useful features."

However, switch to what is the question?

I quite like Jitsi myself.

From their website: "Jitsi (formerly SIP Communicator) is an audio/video and chat communicator that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber, AIM/ICQ, Windows Live, Yahoo! and many other useful features."

Can the Skype team stop adding more and more crap to it, and start removing some of the existing bloat?

I want an instant messenger, not something that takes minutes to load, minutes to fetch messages (many of which i already read on another comp or on my phone, but it still alerts me like they are new messages), and when finally loaded i get bombarded with ads that do not interest me in the slightest, or offers to connect Skype to Facebook and the like, something i already told it to go do something anatomically impossible about more than once.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Umm, why not use something like Jitsi instead?

Only thing is I'm still looking for a decent SIP video client for Android - Sipdroid is excellent for voice calls, but its video support is completely broken. :(

Apropos of absolutely nothing, here's some open source alternatives that also offer encryption (YMMV on how robust the encryption is).

- Jitsi (formerly SIP Communicator) is an audio/video and chat communicator that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber as well as a bunch of other protocols. Set up an XMPP server wherever you want and you're done. (I tried to set up Jabber to use with it on a Linux box on the weekend though and hit a few roadblocks, but more tech savvy people can probably power through them.)

- Mumble - voice communications, intended primarily for gaming but will work with anything. Run your own voice servers and clients connect in, a la TeamSpeak/Ventrilo.

- RetroShare - decentralised p2p file sharing and messaging system.

... and I'll throw this out there as well.

Encrypted SIP may be more secure, but does nothing to hide your IP address. A recently mentioned encrypted SIP client is Jitsi.
https://jitsi.org/
Not sure if it if capturing keys for a man in the middle attack is difficult. A MIM attack by Russia should only be possible when crossing a Russian server. US and Carnivor abilities is unknown.

Pass. Who uses a full PC to make calls?

Their FAQ says that and Android client is in the works and will be demoed very soon. As for Apple they claim that Apple's restrictions shuts them out of iOS - but if you have Apple you already have access to FaceTime for all your Apple devices, not that FT can do multi person calls though.

The release page also indicates that it can already make video calls to Google Talk users on Android. Guess that's the whole point of using a standard like XMPP...

https://jitsi.org/index.php/Main/News

https://download.jitsi.org/jitsi/

Jitsi

Time to switch to something where we actually know what the software is doing.

Will Jitsi let me call everyone else I know who uses skype?

Trying to convince them all to ditch Skype due to the government monitoring them is a waste of time since most people in the world are not that bothered about it. They just the view that since they are noting anything wrong they have nothing to hide or that if government want to monitor them it will find a way anyway.

MS just seems to time some of their mis-steps so well. There is hope. I only wish some of the Linux distros didn't screw up their desktop environments just as Windows 8 was coming out and Valve was looking at Steam for Linux.

Time to switch to something where we actually know what the software is doing.

https://jitsi.org/

Anyone try Jitsi's call record feature?

http://jitsi.org/index.php/Main/Features

I think the best FOSS candidate for the task of replacing Skype is Jitsi (ex- SIP Communicator).
http://jitsi.org/index.php/Main/HomePage

It supports SIP and XMPP (Jabber) fully, including GTalk. Has built-in zero-config ZRTP. Also supports the proprietary IM networks like MSN and Yahoo to various extents, Skype being the only exception with no support (as expected). Been using it for a few months and the nightlies are getting better and better. The 1.0 release could make a good splash on the internet.

SIP. There are lots of free sip servers as well. An interesting project is http://jitsi.org/ and they even have a free service at http://jitsi.org/ which shows a sense of humor. :)

SIP. There are lots of free sip servers as well. An interesting project is http://jitsi.org/ and they even have a free service at http://jitsi.org/ which shows a sense of humor. :)

I've been trying out Jitsi (formerly SIP Communicator) and it seems to be pretty good. I hope to be testing it more in the upcoming months. http://www.jitsi.org/

never tried it, but some people recommended http://www.jitsi.org/

Jitsi (SIP Communicator)
http://www.jitsi.org/index.php/Main/HomePage

Skype is locked up in Microsoft land. People should focus their attention on something that's actually open, like Jitsi.

Features here: http://www.jitsi.org/index.php/Main/Features

Yes, finally ZRTP (Phil Zimmermann's Zfone prototcol) and OTR. I'd like to see H.323 next, please! It also works over XMPP and Google's gChat infrastructure.

I have to concur with Jitsi being an excellent FOSS (FLOSS) replacement for Skype. The developer has gone multi-platform with Java and some native elements for video and audio. It needs some simplification of the UI, but that's not the hard part. The story of it's development was recently included in a /. story on OSS projects book earlier this week:

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/05/23/2227232/The-Architecture-of-Open-Source-Applications
http://www.aosabook.org/en/jitsi.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP

I highly recommend Jitsi as a Skype replacement. Check out http://www.jitsi.org./ It is also worthwhile to check out http://www.gnutelephony.org./ Both these sites have some good info on free, open source Skype replacement plans.

What's wrong with Jitsi? It looks good to me.