Re: [Ekiga-list] Ekiga Interview

[genghiskhan <genghiskhan gmx ca>]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:37:46 +0200
Damien Sandras <dsandras seconix com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 
> 
> Josette Garcia, from O'Reilly, published an interview about Ekiga.
> 
> You can read it here :
> http://www.josetteorama.com/interview/ekiga-open-source-softphone-video-conferencing-and-instant-messenger/
> 
> I am slowly getting back into business, and my view about Ekiga has 
> changed a lot.
> 
> I will try to post something on my blog soon.
> 
> Enjoy the reading,
> 
> Damien
> _______________________________________________
> ekiga-list mailing list
> ekiga-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/ekiga-list
Damien, thank you so much for doing this interview. It was delighting
to me to read it.

However, I want to criticize the following issues:

1) Linphone

1.1) Presence: Linphone is not lacking a contact list with
presence support, but, then again, it isn't perfectly supported, so it
seems to me.

1.2) Contact list: The contact list of Linphone is not as flexible as
the contact list of Ekiga and has no categories (Ekiga wins :-P)


2) Smartphones

2.1) was is necessary to mention Smartphones and is it necessary
to provide Ekiga to Smartphones?
Is Ekiga necessary for Smartphones because Ekiga has different goals?
E.g. From the interview: ' Simply telling “we do not need Ekiga because
we have Empathy” is like telling “let’s remove vim because we have
LibreOffice” '

2.2) A port of Ekiga to Maemo (Nokia N900) is already available
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/maemoekiga/

2.3) SIP clients for other Smartphones are also available
(Luckily,) we have Linphone which is provided to other devices such as
Blackberry and iPhone (source code is also available)
https://www.linphone.org/eng/download/packages/

And, needless to say (too popular, unfortunately) Android
http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Ekiga_Interoperability#Android
CSipSimple, Linphone and SipDroid


3) Main idea: It is unnecessary to mention (this is only me):

3.1) Concerning to the integration of Ekiga with existing tools, instead
of adding them, again, withing Ekiga (e.g. using GNOME’s address book
and GNOME’s account setup instead of providing yours).

3.2) Not all of us are using GNOME or KDE or any other full Desktop
Environments/Stations with all of its set of desktop applications, so
some of us might need to have an option, while compiling Ekiga, of
whether Ekiga should have its own address book, account setup etc. or
should it use one of the following PIM software (fixed list) to manage
this sort of data, or maybe you will use an auto detection feature (not
a fixed list) which will ask which one of the selected (a list of
detected software) you (the user) would like Ekiga to use - of course,
this will be available only for the supported applications that Ekiga
can detect.

For the record, I am using LibreOffice Database to manage all of my
contacts and businesses, since (very sadly and unfortunately) I can not
find a decent easier to use database of a format which is also
available to wide spread applications and also, there is no application
which is capable to satisfy my needs. I'm excluding the applications
that are parts of the GNOME or KDE projects because the following
experience/reason: Mozilla has its own Bookmarks Database format, which
is currently supported also by the Konqueror web browser of KDE, but
nor Epiphany neither Midori and other web browsers support this unique
SQLite databased of Mozilla and this thing may lead one, which is
myself, to an inevitable result where I'm stuck now, which is being
forced to have Firefox installed so that I will still be able to use
the Bookmarks Database. - I do not need XUL to be installed on my
system and yet I still have it so that I will be able to access and use
my Bookmarks Database file. I am locked and this is exactly what I'm
trying to avoid with GNOME and KDE. (Oh, well! this is just me ;-))


4) Addendum: Smartphones (nothing important for this matter)

In this opportunity I want to mention the iX Project, which tend
to be a complete GNU/Linux operating system for iDevices, such as iPad
and iPhone <http://www.projectix.org/>
http://imgur.com/zK5Ecl&1Vdbq&8tUrW&Fk0wG?full

But, personally, as an open source code enthusiast and paranoid!, I
prefer to use Ekiga, or any other VoIP client, with an open source
operating system, such as GNU/Linux and not under closed or semi-FLOSS
platforms, which are spying on its users and limiting them, such as
Android, Blackberry, iPhone, MacOS, Windows and even Maemo.

Anyhow, this should not constitute a concern (but merely a thought of
mine), it is about opening protocols (that are not locking us, like
Skype) and standardizing them (e.g. Viewable with Any Browser: Campaign
<http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/> - this is how I see and
understand it, at least) so it is not me to decide on whether Ekiga
should be ported to Smartphones or not.


5) Damien, thank you for Ekiga and thank you for your devotion and
dedication. I wish you the best as can be and all the positive things
that can be in life and in the universe :-)

Thank you so so much!

Best regards,
Zachary.