[GnomeMeeting-list] You are missing the point

[Damien Sandras <dsandras seconix com>]

Hello Eugenia,

I think you are missing the point and spreading FUD about GnomeMeeting
and our intentions. I don't want to sound aggressive here, but I'm
really worried by your last paragraph in your last article. Some people
say I should ignore it, but I prefer to answer because it spreads wrong
information about what the project is and what it will become in the
future.

Sorry if I'm offending you, but I think it is important for the project
to correct things when other people tell something that is wrong :

Here is the paragraph as reminder:

"Text and Video Messaging Integration
The Gnomemeeting maintainers say that Gnomemeeting is primarily a
PC-2-Phone app instead of a casual chatting one and so if this is the
case I would advocate the forking of its engine for use with Gaim for
the SIP MSN video protocol and maybe even Apple's iChat one
(unfortunately the Yahoo! one is not documented). Also, including Gaim
on Gnome by default makes a lot of sense, even if distros include it
anyway. Gaim should be integrated more with Gnome and its apps, with or
without Dashboard."

I had hoped that my last blog entry was clear, but it seems not. So let
me explain (again) the following :

1) "The Gnomemeeting maintainers say that Gnomemeeting is primarily a
PC-2-Phone app"

I never said that. I think you are confusing things.

GnomeMeeting is *not* primarily a PC-To-Phone application, far from
that. GnomeMeeting is a Voice Over IP / videoconferencing softphone, by
comparison to the hardphones you can buy from manufacturers (very
similar to normal phones except that they work over IP). 

GnomeMeeting primarily is a PC-To-PC application even though it can also
work as a PC-To-Phone application with appropriate hardware (a gateway,
an IPBX software like Bayonne or Asterisk, or an externel provider like
MicroTelco). You have to *compare* GnomeMeeting to your phone and think
of it as one of the applications that will one day permit you to replace
it by a VoIP solution. Again, that doesn't mean that GnomeMeeting is a
PC-To-Phone application, I guess only a very small percentage of the
users are using it as a PC-To-Phone application.

2) "instead of a casual chatting"

GnomeMeeting *is* a casual chatting application, but it is *not* an
Instant Messenger. A bit like X-Chat is not an instant messenger and
will never be despite the fact that it permits you to chat with people.
All chat applications of the world are not necessarily Instant
Messengers. I know that Apple and Microsoft have strong marketing, but
it is time to understand that iChat is only an Instant Messenger with
very few videoconferencing features and with even less VoIP features.
GnomeMeeting is just the opposite.

3) "forking of its engine for use with Gaim for the SIP MSN video
protocol"

Forking its engine won't help in getting SIP and compatibility with
their proprietary and patented codecs... SIP support in GnomeMeeting is
foreseen in the future.

4) Never forget we are on Unix, and that the old Unix moto
approximatively says "do few things, but do them well". That's why
having a full application doing IRC, instant messenging,
videoconferencing, voice over ip doesn't make sense. The best is to have
separate applications, like GnomeMeeting and Gaim, that do their job
perfectly and that are integrated together. Just like you can do "ls |
more". That is a good way to prevent poor videoconferencing and voice
over ip applications like the ones you are refering to.

I'm not against integration of GnomeMeeting and Gaim, I'm for it. All
the tools are present in GnomeMeeting to achieve that kind of things,
and I even plan to build a reusable components that can be reused by
GNOME applications (Gaim is not a GNOME application and doesn't use its
technologies by the way, but that's another problem).

Your first article was comparing GnomeMeeting to an Instant Messenger. I
tried to explain that GnomeMeeting was a different kind of application
(would you compare gaim to X-Chat, or xmms to gnome-cd-player?). But I
certainly didn't tell that GnomeMeeting was primarily a PC-To-Phone
application, or that GnomeMeeting was not a casual chat application. It
is all both, but it is more than that. GnomeMeeting is primarily a Voice
Over IP and videoconferencing application. GnomeMeeting will be part of
the future if IP-Telephony becomes more widely used, while iChat will
probably stay an Instant Messenger. That's right. But that doesn't mean
that GnomeMeeting is not integrable with Instant Messengers (for
example, kmess is integrating it). That simply means that it is not
*comparable* to an Instant Messenger, and that it won't *become* an
Instant Messenger.

I really hope all concepts are understood now. If you have more
questions, feel free to ask.

Thank you for having read me.
-- 
 _      Damien Sandras
(o-     
//\     It-Optics s.a.
v_/_    GnomeMeeting: http://www.gnomemeeting.org/
        FOSDEM 2004:  http://www.fosdem.org
        H.323 phone:  callto:ils.seconix.com/dsandras seconix com