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."
Also has a singularly unhelpful website, but that may be partially down to the/. effect meaning I can't reach the source code. Ah well, maybe it'll be good when it's done!:)
I don't want to disparage their efforts at all, it does look like a very interesting and worthwhile project. Perhaps this article will attract more people to it.
However, it seems a bit premature to have this on the front page of Slashdot.
They happen to be using Trac as a web-based wiki/issue tracker/project management tool, and they're using an old version.
Trac's development trunk has fixed some of these locking issues with SQLite as well as allowed for using Postgres as a backend. I'm still not sure if it would survive a slashdotting, but it would be better performance than this.
I don't think their dev server is any indication of the level of service...
-- Mind the gap
Just in case..
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Well minus the 500 error I can't tell much about this product. I just hope its extensible. VOIP is huge right now.
I am not sure how the traditional carriers can handle this competition, but what I have noticed is that outside of the non-metro areas it isn't catching on like I thought it would. Being originally from the midwest I still have to explain what voip is.
Try explaining why a street address is not as good as an IP address to a farmer.
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
Lumpy
·
· Score: 5, Informative
true. if you want that just use asterisk and a SIP phone.
myself and a few friends all have asterisk systems and broadvoice. if I want to call california my asterisk system sees that and routes the call to his asterisk system and then out his broadvoice connection. works great take no effort and does not mess up his use of his broadvoice line as broadvoice allows 4 voice channels to be open on one line. he can have 2 calls going on while I use one channel.
if you are a techie type of person screwing around with these desktop app based systems is a waste of time. use real SIP hardware and get in on the real fun.
nothing like your own conference bridge to have 12 frinds all yakking away in.
-- Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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
Re:Open source alternative added value
by
n8willis
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Baloney. They use the same codecs as everyone else:
The real power of Skype
by
HateBreeder
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
PC-to-PC calls were available for ages... some software do this very well. But PC-to-Regular Land Lines and Cellular Phones at extremely competitive international/long-distance rates (at least where I live) is the *real* breakthrough.
So until this project supports such services... Nothing to see here, please move along.
-- Sigs are for the weak.
Re:The real power of Skype
by
sulimma
·
· Score: 3, Informative
If it supports SIP calls it supports PC-to-POTS and POTS-to-PC.
You can pay external SIP-gateways for PC-to-POTS. You can POTS-to-PC for free.
The beauty of it is that you can rent phone numbers in as many area codes or countries as you like and route them to your computer.
Re:The real power of Skype
by
bonnseba
·
· Score: 2, Informative
But this one do.
Wengo is a french telco affiliated to "neuf telecom", one of the leaders. It offers PC to regular phone and regular phone to pc for France residents. They also have very competitive international rates.
http://www.wengo.fr/ (site in french).
Free as in... Windows?
by
Masque
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This is an "alternative to Skype" in the same way that Google Talk is - it's an alternative if you happen to be running Windows 2000/XP. I have too much to do during the day to mess with running Windows, so it looks like I'm sticking with Skype or GizmoProject. No affiliation with either, aside from liking the fact that they work on more than one OS.
Re:Free as in... Windows?
by
jma05
·
· Score: 2, Informative
But Jabber doesn't do voice.
Re:Free as in... Windows?
by
LnxAddct
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Google extended the Jabber protocol to support voice in a jabber friendly way. They are preparing the spec for public release right now and I assume it'll be integrated with Gaim. Google paid several developers for Gaim over the "Summer of Code" and I believe they still have other resources dedicated to adding features to gaim. Regardless, if it is an open spec it will eventually be added to Gaim and Google's protocol will most likely support Speex according to their site. Regards, Steve
Re:Hopefully not GPL'd
by
j.leidner
·
· Score: 3, Informative
1. Code compile with gcc does NOT automatically fall under the GPL (read up on the differences between GPL and LGPL).
2. You don't have to use GCC to compile your project. (There are also commmercial compilers for C++, for example Intel has one.). Your Windows re-write of the project seems like a big waste just because your lawyers don't have a clue.
3. You don't have to open-source ALL your code, only the changes to the core Linux operating system. Surely you could have split your system into an application layer and an OS layer, only opening up the latter (probably with very limited use to your competitor compared to the former).
4. If your project management was unaware of the licensing situation before embarking on a project, that doesn't sound good, uh-oh. You had better try to silently move to work a more competent project leader.
Better luck next time!
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.
http://www.voipbuster.com/en/index.html
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Well, as far as VOIP is I'm very glad with voipbuster, it lets me call for free most of the landlines in europe and also in USA.
It's not an opensource solution, but after all the really important thing is what can a regular guy get out technology, opensource or not. If voipbuster let me call for free most of my friends in europe I for one salute our new voip ruler, opensource or not.
interoperatibility?
by
tuggy
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
i think we are starting to see too many VoIP solutions... we dont know lots of competition, we need interoperatibility between them. Google said its trying to achieve that with Talk, I hope the rest goes the same way...
Re:Hopefully not GPL'd
by
AKAImBatman
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Besides being trolled, point 1 is factually incorrect. The use of GPL or LGPL doesn't matter in the case of GCC, because the output of GPLed programs is not covered by the GPL. Only if your code links to GCC or some other (L)GPL package will the GPL be invoked. Here's the relevant section of the GPL:
The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
Phone Gaim?
by
johnnyproton
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I know this was made by the guys at Lindows but it seems like such a great project. Wonder why the Gaim developers don't talk about it on their own home page?
It seems this would be a great option for GNOME in general. I'd love to have this functionality tied into my Evolution Data Server instead of creating yet another buddy list, etc.
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.
AFAIK, sip is being coded and/or already added.. it has voice, video, text chat... open source and in pretty good shape compared to the pre-alpha software in the story..
http://www.gnomemeeting.org/
Re:Hopefully not GPL'd
by
Nekkrist
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution.
From the FAQ found here you should be able to see that if you were not intending to distribute the program, then you wouldn't have to make the source code available to anyone. In fact you only have to make the source available to people you distribute the program to. It sounds like you need some more competant lawyers.
Q: If I know someone has a copy of a GPL-covered program, can I demand he give me a copy?
A: No. The GPL gives him permission to make and redistribute copies of the program if he chooses to do so. He also has the right not to redistribute the program, if that is what he chooses.
Of course it looks promising at this stage. When a product isn't completed it is always presented as the perfect solution.
This is classic with salesmen. "Will your product do such and such?"
And of course Mr. Salesman says yes in order to close the deal.
I understand this is opensource but the concept is the same. For the project to get attention it's presented as the open source skype alternative.
Let's just see it materialize, let's see it's capacities, limitations. Only then we will be able to claim what it is.
Showcasing 'vapor' as the next super thing is easy.
Re:OpenWengoOut?
by
ghost4096
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The OpenWengo -> PSTN and PSTN->OpenWengo does work...
Go to www.wengo.fr to subscribe
Skype was soaring to popularity long before they introduced their "SkypeOut" functionality. Skype's real innovation was their NAT hole punching which meant that you didn't have to worry about fiddling with your firewall to get it to work, a major shortcoming of other VOIP apps.
Re:Disagree
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This memo documents the methods used by the current peer-to-peer (P2P) applications to communicate in the presence of middleboxes such as firewalls and network address translators (NAT). In addition, the memo suggests guidelines to application designers and middlebox implementers on the measures they could take to enable immediate, wide deployment of P2P applications with or without requiring the use of special proxy, relay or midcom protocols.
How about a GOOD softphone?
by
Kerbo
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Yeah its great that more and more companies are coming out with Softphones that use SIP to talk to THEIR networks. Then why can't anybody make a damned good softphone that will talk to ANY SIP or IAX network? The biggest problem for mobile users who are using softphones to talk through a remote VOIP PBX is that it only works on about 60% of the networks. If someone would code a GOOD softphone for SIP and/or IAX, so our softphones worked on 90%+ networks, it would be worth paying for.
I guess the point is that an open source project probably isn't able to do this. You know, the topic and stuff.
There's another open-source alternative
by
meisterk
·
· Score: 4, Funny
It's called OpenBlah, it has many features: HDTV streaming, 96Khz/24 sampling lossless encoding at 120:1 compression ratio, peer-to-peer real-time updates without restarting and an undelrying small-talk based OS with a korn shell! It's still under heavy developement (they just hit the planning milestone) but surely will it kick evil, closed-format Skype's ass like there's no tomorrow.
I don't care about protocols and open-source-ness if the product a) works like a charm, b) has a Linux client available which doesn't suck or crash, c) provides a fair-priced VoIPtelephone service.
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.
Slashdot Mirror
Development Status: Pre-Alpha
/. effect meaning I can't reach the source code. Ah well, maybe it'll be good when it's done! :)
Also has a singularly unhelpful website, but that may be partially down to the
Game dev and music blog
here's the Coral cache
Well minus the 500 error I can't tell much about this product. I just hope its extensible. VOIP is huge right now.
I am not sure how the traditional carriers can handle this competition, but what I have noticed is that outside of the non-metro areas it isn't catching on like I thought it would. Being originally from the midwest I still have to explain what voip is.
Try explaining why a street address is not as good as an IP address to a farmer.
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
PC-to-PC calls were available for ages... some software do this very well.
But PC-to-Regular Land Lines and Cellular Phones at extremely competitive international/long-distance rates (at least where I live) is the *real* breakthrough.
So until this project supports such services...
Nothing to see here, please move along.
Sigs are for the weak.
This is an "alternative to Skype" in the same way that Google Talk is - it's an alternative if you happen to be running Windows 2000/XP. I have too much to do during the day to mess with running Windows, so it looks like I'm sticking with Skype or GizmoProject. No affiliation with either, aside from liking the fact that they work on more than one OS.
2. You don't have to use GCC to compile your project. (There are also commmercial compilers for C++, for example Intel has one.). Your Windows re-write of the project seems like a big waste just because your lawyers don't have a clue.
3. You don't have to open-source ALL your code, only the changes to the core Linux operating system. Surely you could have split your system into an application layer and an OS layer, only opening up the latter (probably with very limited use to your competitor compared to the former).
4. If your project management was unaware of the licensing situation before embarking on a project, that doesn't sound good, uh-oh. You had better try to silently move to work a more competent project leader.
Better luck next time!
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.
Well, as far as VOIP is I'm very glad with voipbuster, it lets me call for free most of the landlines in europe and also in USA. It's not an opensource solution, but after all the really important thing is what can a regular guy get out technology, opensource or not. If voipbuster let me call for free most of my friends in europe I for one salute our new voip ruler, opensource or not.
i think we are starting to see too many VoIP solutions...
we dont know lots of competition, we need interoperatibility between them.
Google said its trying to achieve that with Talk, I hope the rest goes the same way...
Thank you, please drive through.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Before releasing it, it better have a simple name like Wengo or Rype.
I think the word Open in the first bit of every free OS software is going to hinder adoption by the unwashed masses.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I know this was made by the guys at Lindows but it seems like such a great project. Wonder why the Gaim developers don't talk about it on their own home page?
http://www.phonegaim.com/
It seems this would be a great option for GNOME in general. I'd love to have this functionality tied into my Evolution Data Server instead of creating yet another buddy list, etc.
AFAIK, sip is being coded and/or already added.. it has voice, video, text chat... open source and in pretty good shape compared to the pre-alpha software in the story..
http://www.gnomemeeting.org/
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution.
From the FAQ found here you should be able to see that if you were not intending to distribute the program, then you wouldn't have to make the source code available to anyone. In fact you only have to make the source available to people you distribute the program to. It sounds like you need some more competant lawyers.
Q: If I know someone has a copy of a GPL-covered program, can I demand he give me a copy?
A: No. The GPL gives him permission to make and redistribute copies of the program if he chooses to do so. He also has the right not to redistribute the program, if that is what he chooses.
Of course it looks promising at this stage. When a product isn't completed it is always presented as the perfect solution. This is classic with salesmen. "Will your product do such and such?" And of course Mr. Salesman says yes in order to close the deal. I understand this is opensource but the concept is the same. For the project to get attention it's presented as the open source skype alternative. Let's just see it materialize, let's see it's capacities, limitations. Only then we will be able to claim what it is. Showcasing 'vapor' as the next super thing is easy.
The OpenWengo -> PSTN and PSTN->OpenWengo does work... Go to www.wengo.fr to subscribe
Skype was soaring to popularity long before they introduced their "SkypeOut" functionality. Skype's real innovation was their NAT hole punching which meant that you didn't have to worry about fiddling with your firewall to get it to work, a major shortcoming of other VOIP apps.
I couldn't find info on how OpenWengo does it, but SMS integration should be technically easy under Google Talk
Yeah its great that more and more companies are coming out with Softphones that use SIP to talk to THEIR networks. Then why can't anybody make a damned good softphone that will talk to ANY SIP or IAX network? The biggest problem for mobile users who are using softphones to talk through a remote VOIP PBX is that it only works on about 60% of the networks. If someone would code a GOOD softphone for SIP and/or IAX, so our softphones worked on 90%+ networks, it would be worth paying for.
I guess the point is that an open source project probably isn't able to do this. You know, the topic and stuff.
It's called OpenBlah, it has many features: HDTV streaming, 96Khz/24 sampling lossless encoding at 120:1 compression ratio, peer-to-peer real-time updates without restarting and an undelrying small-talk based OS with a korn shell! It's still under heavy developement (they just hit the planning milestone) but surely will it kick evil, closed-format Skype's ass like there's no tomorrow.
this is not an alternative to Skype.
I don't care about protocols and open-source-ness if the product a) works like a charm, b) has a Linux client available which doesn't suck or crash, c) provides a fair-priced VoIPtelephone service.
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.