Re: [Ekiga-list] usability

[fred k <fred k member fsf org>]

Hi That Guy and all gals and guys,

Let me discern technical issues and non-tech ones. Plus a question regarding "SIP provider" at the bottom.

That Guy wrote:
> $kype will continue to have a long LONG life of spying ahead.
I agree but this is not a technical issue here.

>  ...the chances that the person you hope to communicate will also be able to are slim to none.
Maybe right. I'm struggling to support non-techie users of Ekiga, including *me*, that's why I'm on this 
mailing list. I'm struggling to support non-techy Skype users, too, to some lesser degree.

> FOSS for once can't hold a candle to the proprietary crap and ...
Looks like half-tech issue, too.
Assuming you said Freedom-and-Open-Source-Software, "can't hold"
is an over-generalization. Free or proprietary, SIP or skype-proprietary protocol, user interface style one 
or the other, they are all *different* matters. You are mostly hitting protocol problem and user interface 
design problem.

My observation is that Skype is hiding protocol problem (I'd say 'challenges' like NAT traverse, SIP, pure 
peer-to-peer) with their possibly dirty tricks a.k.a proprietary protocol. You can't rely these tricks in the 
free-and-open world where only clever tricks are allowed or you will be signed out.

> ...beyond a *tiny* group of individuals and will eventually vanish.
Right. 
Looks like non-tech issue but very political.
Rest assured should we vanish, then the large and precious Ekiga resource will be picked up by the next 
*tiny* group and flourish. I'm happily optimistic about this model but I worry, rather, should I settle with 
the proprietary, even smaller number of companies (one?) would vanish or worse, charge us, snoop us, and/or 
force us into that dirty world.


Stuart wrote:
> This is not a FOSS problem, but a protocol problem.  All these complex problems ...
Yeah, I think I understand it clearly now. And learn IAX a bit. Thanks.

> ... you do *not* have [to] do/know all that if you use a commercial...
I have a question. When you use commercial SIP provider, do you mean your voice/video/data goes through a server at the SIP provider before reaching called party (i.e., non-peer-to-peer model)? If this is the case, why NAT problems goes away? (Pointer to this ML archive or another appreciated to save your time.) My understanding is that in Ekiga (or SIP in general, possibly), called party address to IP address:port translation is done at the SIP server and following call-setup/negotiations and payload communications are peer-to-peer. 

fred