Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the open-is-better-right dept.
slackah writes "OpenWengo an open source alternative to skype. It includes features such as sip calls, SMS, video conference, and automatic NAT configuration. It's still under heavy development, but it looks very promising."
Open source alternative added value
by
jurt1235
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The added value of skype is that they have a pretty good working voice protocol compared to others at this moment. The other part in added value is that they can connect to the normal voice networks globally. Just having an opensource chat program is not going to do you a lot of good in the second case.
Re:Open source alternative added value
by
LnxAddct
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Depsite Google Talk's extreme lack of features (i.e. emoticons, no file transfers, no conversation logging), their Talk part is quite superior to Skype's. The voice quality is clearly higher and the bandwidth usage is similar to Skype's (both can be used over a 56k connection just fine). It seems Google put a lot of focus on the backend stuff, and they are currently writing up the spec for it to be released as an open protocol. Skype was significanlty better then prior generations, but Google's Talk is probably the best in town right now as far as quality goes. Regards, Steve
I Don't Get It
by
MikeyTheK
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
What is the big deal? It's neat to be able to do this sort of thing, but it's, what, ten years ahead of its time? Desktop OS's aren't reliable enough yet, and get slowed down at the weirdest times, which means that this is going to be unreliable, too. Please give me a cheap-to-deploy, POTS-enabled (yet still cheap) system that a monkey (i.e. the person at the front desk) can administer. It needs to be able to interface with HR so that when a new person comes on board the system is automatically updated, and when a person leaves their stuff is forwarded to their manager and their account is blocked. THAT would be great. The rest of this stuff is just a lot of technology for WebEx to deploy to reduce their development costs.
-- Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
Re:I Don't Get It
by
Lumpy
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
asterisk.
in fact asterisk@home can be administered by a monkey. espically if you compare it to any professional phone system.
oh, with a bit of perl scripting the phone system can be automated and interfaced to HR databases. something that is 100% impossible with any AT&T, siemens, Cisco, NEC or other phone system made and sold.
-- Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Re:OpenWengoOut?
by
ghost4096
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The OpenWengo -> PSTN and PSTN->OpenWengo does work...
Go to www.wengo.fr to subscribe
SMS Integration
by
mparaz
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Re:Old Hat
by
squiggleslash
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's not difficult to come up with more mature technologies that have gone by the wayside, indeed, in many ways we've gone backwards. I recall CUSeeMe clients being available for the Commodore Amiga. About the only major complaint anyone had with them was that they required the attrocious and bloated "MUI" user interface system installed. That was in the mid-nineties.
Now we've progressed so far we're standardized upon an entirely new and unnecessary protocol that doesn't even work transparently through, either directly or in proxiable form, NAT, and appears to exist only because of the brain dead meme that's common amongst programmers right now that everything has to look like the web. Voice over IP and Instant Messaging? It'd be so much easier if it looked like HTTP over UDP. Yeah, that's the ticket, that'll make it much easier to implement! And let's make all of our data look like HTML as well, we can create "XML" and store everything like that, I mean, it'll be a zilliontrilliongillion times easier to parse than TAB DELIMITED FILES.
What are they? Nuts? Why does everything have to look like something COMPLETELY UNRELATED? Why can't we just, say, design a sane streaming protocol which includes destination host information and stuff? What are they going to reinvent next? Maybe JPEG should be replaced by numbers stored as XML... yeah, make it like this:
I mean, that'd make MUCH MORE SENSE than storing it in an efficient binary form that actually resembles the data. Because, like, people can read it in VI. Except they can't because there's too many FUCKING TAGS for it to be readable. What happens when you combine the inefficiency of ASCII text with the readability of binary? XML, that's what.
Anyway, better quit this rant before some mods me flameworthy.
The point is, we seem to be unwilling at the moment to build on intelligently designed technologies often simply because someone has declared it "obsolete" because they want to re-invent the wheel. SIP? Someone's been SIPping the kool-aid if you ask me. We know what needs to be done, but for some reason encapsulating HTTP in a UDP packet is more exciting. Let's choose appropriate technologies for every situation, rather than trying to shoe-horn whatever's trendy today.
Readers who are interested in my replacement to SIP, called DuplexStreams, can contribute to my SourceForge project.
-- You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Phone Gaim?
by
n8willis
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The Gaim developers don't talk about it because the Linspire guys have only released the "source" in completely unusable form and refuse to answer simple questions about it. Plus, they didn't make it a plugin that normal users could install, they forked the code and hacked it together. They're trying to weasel the GPL, as they usually do.
What's more, it's based on an ancient fork of Gaim, so the developers naturally don't have time to waste on it. It'd be great if the Gaim folks added some softphone capabilities, but they'll likely do it starting from the modern codebase. Or someone else will write a plugin.
Last but not least, the people who created and then later abandoned phonegaim did so because they turned their efforts to creating the closed-source, proprietary replacement for it: Gizmo.
This they have no intention of putting under an open-source license either. They like to use the word "open" as much as possible on their web site to confuse people into thinking they're open source, but they're not. Frankly the more I learn about Linspire, the less I like them, for just such actions as these. Give your money to a company that supports free software.
Slashdot Mirror
The added value of skype is that they have a pretty good working voice protocol compared to others at this moment. The other part in added value is that they can connect to the normal voice networks globally. Just having an opensource chat program is not going to do you a lot of good in the second case.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
What is the big deal? It's neat to be able to do this sort of thing, but it's, what, ten years ahead of its time?
Desktop OS's aren't reliable enough yet, and get slowed down at the weirdest times, which means that this is going to be unreliable, too.
Please give me a cheap-to-deploy, POTS-enabled (yet still cheap) system that a monkey (i.e. the person at the front desk) can administer. It needs to be able to interface with HR so that when a new person comes on board the system is automatically updated, and when a person leaves their stuff is forwarded to their manager and their account is blocked.
THAT would be great. The rest of this stuff is just a lot of technology for WebEx to deploy to reduce their development costs.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
The OpenWengo -> PSTN and PSTN->OpenWengo does work... Go to www.wengo.fr to subscribe
I couldn't find info on how OpenWengo does it, but SMS integration should be technically easy under Google Talk
Now we've progressed so far we're standardized upon an entirely new and unnecessary protocol that doesn't even work transparently through, either directly or in proxiable form, NAT, and appears to exist only because of the brain dead meme that's common amongst programmers right now that everything has to look like the web. Voice over IP and Instant Messaging? It'd be so much easier if it looked like HTTP over UDP. Yeah, that's the ticket, that'll make it much easier to implement! And let's make all of our data look like HTML as well, we can create "XML" and store everything like that, I mean, it'll be a zilliontrilliongillion times easier to parse than TAB DELIMITED FILES.
What are they? Nuts? Why does everything have to look like something COMPLETELY UNRELATED? Why can't we just, say, design a sane streaming protocol which includes destination host information and stuff? What are they going to reinvent next? Maybe JPEG should be replaced by numbers stored as XML... yeah, make it like this:
I mean, that'd make MUCH MORE SENSE than storing it in an efficient binary form that actually resembles the data. Because, like, people can read it in VI. Except they can't because there's too many FUCKING TAGS for it to be readable. What happens when you combine the inefficiency of ASCII text with the readability of binary? XML, that's what.Anyway, better quit this rant before some mods me flameworthy.
The point is, we seem to be unwilling at the moment to build on intelligently designed technologies often simply because someone has declared it "obsolete" because they want to re-invent the wheel. SIP? Someone's been SIPping the kool-aid if you ask me. We know what needs to be done, but for some reason encapsulating HTTP in a UDP packet is more exciting. Let's choose appropriate technologies for every situation, rather than trying to shoe-horn whatever's trendy today.
Readers who are interested in my replacement to SIP, called DuplexStreams, can contribute to my SourceForge project.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What's more, it's based on an ancient fork of Gaim, so the developers naturally don't have time to waste on it. It'd be great if the Gaim folks added some softphone capabilities, but they'll likely do it starting from the modern codebase. Or someone else will write a plugin.
Last but not least, the people who created and then later abandoned phonegaim did so because they turned their efforts to creating the closed-source, proprietary replacement for it: Gizmo.
This they have no intention of putting under an open-source license either. They like to use the word "open" as much as possible on their web site to confuse people into thinking they're open source, but they're not. Frankly the more I learn about Linspire, the less I like them, for just such actions as these. Give your money to a company that supports free software.
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.