Re: [GnomeMeeting-list] Interest for GM 2.00

[Allan <amau sympatico ca>]

On Wednesday 30 November 2005 07:30, Damien Sandras wrote:
> Hello to all,
>
>
> I have some doubts about the future of the project. I know that it is a
> recurrent subject with me since I started it back in 2000...
>

Let me give you a few words of encouragement as a humble user who has been 
trying to get something working reliably between Windows and Linux for months 
by offering a few comments of the following.

> 1) A majority of users want simple audio/video chat. Kopete recently
> started allowing this with Yahoo and MSN, and GAIM is on the road to
> offer it too. Projects like Telepathy/Farsight will offer a
> GStreamer-based alternative to GAIM and Kopete.
>

As someone has already mentioned, these are all to come.  Kopete looked 
promising until I tried setting it up only to find there was no audio setup.  
In my view the field remains still wide open.


> 2) Another big part of the users want a Skype-like software supporting
> SIP. Some big companies, with loads of money, are developing full-time
> on such solutions, like Wengo, or Gizmo, or even others.
>

Again as others have suggested, I would prefer something open source for all 
the obvious reasons.

> 3) Another part of users just want something that works and will use
> Skype despite the risks that are involved.
>

I agree except that skype still does not have video under Linux and does not 
directly support using the microphone built in to my camera for input any my 
sound card for output.

> 4) Finally, on the corporate side, where there are less users at least
> on GNU/Linux, you have big companies offering solutions like XTEN,
> developed full-time by talented developers, even though being
> proprietary. But corportate users often do not care about the Open
> Source aspect of things, and big corporations are already offering their
> own softphone working with their IPBX.
>
> GnomeMeeting is playing in those 4 fields, but there are now so many
> alternatives, that I wonder if there is still an interest to develop
> GnomeMeeting after 2.00 will have been released. Two years ago, you had
> to use GnomeMeeting if you wanted to do 1), 2), or 4). Currently, there
> are so many alternatives that GnomeMeeting is perhaps unuseful.
>
I can't really comment on no. 4 and while I agree that there are many 
alternatives coming along none of them appear to work satisfactorily on my 
system.  Many (most ?) do not recognise my webcam microphone.  Others are so 
poorly documented that one gives up after a while hoping that things may 
improve in time.  

I thing what you have working in your favour is the setup wizard as well as 
the much better than average documentation, not to mention the program 
itself.  I'm really looking forward to v. 2 as well as to the Windows version 
and encourage you to continue.

Allan