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FOSS Multicast Document Sharing?

Posted by timothy on from the holy-grail-for-remote-work dept.

Jawdy writes "I am currently leading a small game development project with artists and developers scattered all over the country. Getting together is somewhat difficult, but we try to do this every couple of months. We often share all kinds of documents with each other, and even do so while using IM clients (GTalk and MSN), but this winds up being a tedious process of: send document; read and edit; send back; rinse and repeat. What I wanted to ask fellow slashdotters is, if anyone knows of any FOSS software that can handle IM (or even voice chat), Whiteboard and document sharing — where we can all see the document, pass around 'editing rights' and edit live. Even several small apps that handle the individual components would help out!"

3 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. iChat by Foofoobar · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    My coworker is often out of the country and I need to work on code with him. We use iChat to share documents and workspace to work on code at the same time and share ideas. It has voice and video as well. I highly recommend this to everyone who has to telecommute.

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    This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
    1. Re:iChat by Foofoobar · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Well... you gotta comprimise. I have looked for a FOSS app that does everything iChat does and it just doesn't exist. There are some 'half-implemented' Jabber efforts which do it via a browser with Flash and are buggy but nothing that comes close to this good of a finished product. Honestly I do connect to most of my Linux boxes via shell anyway and with Bootcamp/VMWare, you can install Windows if you have to.

      It may be proprietary but Apple has turned out to be the best portable environment for the developers at the last couple jobs I have been at; it's the reason I got one because all the java devs at my last job used Macbook Pros and they were able to telecommute and interface more easily than the Windows or Linux members of the team.

      I love FOSS but this is where I drop it... when a good product makes me pay for it.
      But then again, this is where FOSS's strength is; in finding these products that rely on a platform and replacing them with an open version.

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      This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
    2. Re:iChat by archkittens · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      if you dont mind proprietary solutions, might i suggest cisco meetingplace. it works very well, even with "express", which we've recently shown off to the C-level parade at my workplace

      being a rather medium sized organization (muni level government organization with approx. 3880 employees), we paid a bit more than a smaller company would for the product, but let me brag about it for a moment:

      • screencasting
      • integrated chat
      • runs as a browser plugin
      • integrated conference calling
      • scheduled or ad-hoc meetings
      • high quality streaming video
      • LDAP integration
      • integrated presence

      the list can go on for quite a bit. cisco is premium, but i can honestly say you get what you pay for. scott adams seemed to like it, anyways... http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/partners/news/2006/pr_prod_06-12.html