Version 2.0 Released For Open Skype Alternative Jitsi 112
New submitter emilcho writes with news for anyone looking for a Free alternative to Skype "Among the most prominent new features people will find quality multi-party video conferences for XMPP, audio device hot-plugging, support for Outlook presence and calls, an overhauled user interface and support for the Opus and VP8 audio/video codec. Jitsi has lately shaped into one of the more viable open Skype Alternatives with features such as end-to-end ZRTP encryption for audio and video calls. The 2.0 version has been in the works for almost a year now, so this is an important step for the project."
There are prebuilt packages for Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, Windows, and OS X.
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Skype is not a standard. What are the competing standards here?
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I agree. However everyone *knows* skype. They have a huge user base. That base will be even bigger when MS finishes forcing all MSN users onto it. There are standards, and then there are defacto standards because everyone uses the same product.
I *really* like the idea of Jitsi. Unfortunately I'm also likely to never use it because I don't know a single other person that uses it, or uses other tools that share the same protocols, despite the fact that said protocols are open standards. Skype is now jus
Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)
If only I could delete my post...
I got Jitsi confused with something else entirely. I'll just shut up now and sit in a corner.
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
The competing standards are SIP, standard audio codecs, and H.264 video confrencing.
Skype is propritory. SIP is standards based. Skype is for Skype only with payments required to make (Skype out) and/or receive (skype in) calls to normal telephone. Skype out and Skype in can be only purchased from one vendor.
Unlike Skype, a SIP provider can provide any and/or all of the components. Depending on provider (many) you can mix and match as you like.
Free SIP accounts can be obtined from Ekiga, Iptel, ippi, and others. Many provide free voicemail, and other features such as a gateway to Google Voice and Skype. Call your SIP friends, your Google Talk Friends, and Skype friends all with the same provider.. (personal plug.. ippi.com provides a free skype and google talk gateways) Google it.
Free softphones compatible with SIP are numerous, some of which enable encryption, including the one featured in this slashdot article. Free softphones can be obtained from Ekiga, Twinkle, iptel, ippi, and others.
Hardware phones compatibe with SIP are numberous including offerings from Cisco;/Linksis, Grandstream, Panasonic, and others. No need to keep your computer on to use it. Some even include a vidoe phone.
There are many providers of DID numbers that do the same as Skype in. You can have multiple numbers including 800, local, overseas, etc. Some providers even offer a DID number for free. IPkall is a good source for a free USA phone number. Think Skype-in but free.
You can buy a calling plan to permit placing calls. This is generaly not free, but quite cost effective.
You can tie them together in your own free open source PBX.. such as Asterisk.
If you want to buy an all in one package plan, providers such as Century Link, Comcast, Magic Jack, Ooma, Net2Phone, Vonage etc all offer complete packages for plug and play operation with less flexibility than mix and match.
Combining SIP and Google Talk allows me to place calls from Google, and receive my calls on a VOIP phone, even whtn the computer is off. After moving to SIP, I hardly use Skype at all.
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Jitsi is a SIP client.. It works with ippi and iptel as mentiioned above. Add this to a list of SIP clients listed above, some which support encryption and video.
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You can tie them together in your own free open source PBX.. such as Asterisk.
We do this. My sysadmins gave me Jitsi when I asked about getting a phone at home. It was dead easy to set up; I just run my VPN client, fire up Jitsi and I can make calls using my headset painlessly and easily. In fact I prefer making calls from home now because I can use my awesome gaming headset instead of the crappy handset I have on my desk phone; it's easier to hear people and I can type/take notes while I talk.
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For even more freedom of movement, use a trucker's noise canceling bluetooth headset.
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Additionally, Jitsi doesn't represent a new standard, it's a new implementation of an already existing standard.
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
What competing standards? Skype does not provide end to end encryption, it's no competition for Jitsi. And Jitsi itself is using established standards, ZRTP was created by Philip Zimmerman of PGP fame and is RFC6189.
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This protocol does not require prior shared secrets or rely on a Public key infrastructure (PKI) or on certification authorities, in fact ephemeral Diffie-Hellman keys are generated on each session establishment: this allows the complexity of creating and maintaining a trusted third-party to be bypassed.
Pretty snazzy. Seems like it could have a lock on the convienence factor. Also could have a lot of exploit vectors.
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ZRTP looks solid to me. If the short authentication strings (SAS) check out, there is minimal likelihood of a successful attack on the protocol*. If you still don't trust it, jitsi can run peer to peer behind a vpn. If that's not good enough for you, you should be holding your conversations in a noisy location, away from all electronic devices, and out of sight of lip readers with telescopes.
*Jiti uses a 4 character SAS, which works out to around 24 bits for a 0.000006% chance of successful attack. Atta
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I suppose I should look more to see why they selected that, but I'd have preferred to see SRP used. SRP with a zero key (or any other pre-defined key) is essentially DH anyway, and the authentication is built in to the key exchange. It also has the nice feature that one side can't find out the other side's authentication credentials (and hence can't impersonate them).
SRP is typically used in a client-server relationship, but it can be used in a symmetric way as well.
Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)
And yet again someone quotes XKCD without having a clue what they're talking about.
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To be fair to XKCD, most people on Slashdot (and elsewhere on the internet) who don't quote them are equally clueless.
Re:Great (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems people can only read into small details and aren't able to look at the big picture.
Skype, Facetime and all others are all incompatible with each other. Even basic text messaging services are not compatible with each others, unlike email and websites.
That's why I quoted xkcd. Not because of the standards used by other programs, but because we seriously need to force Microsoft, Apple and others to unite and support a single standard. All this fragmentation reminds me of the MS-DOS/Mac OS 9/AmigaOS/TOS days.
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Come on, just admit you got this one wrong. Jitsi is software utilizes exactly those 'central standards' you refer to - XMPP may be the primary contender for messaging/voice (via Jingle over XMPP) etc. standard at the moment. The whole point is that different software can talk to one another as e.g. Jitsi supports XMPP, and other XMPP clients also do e.g. Adium. Think of Jitsi end-user software as the equivalent of a web browser and of XMPP as the equivalent of HTTP.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comp [wikipedia.org]
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Jabber's a server, Jitsi's a client. That would be a bit like trying to merge Apache and Webkit.
I tried the previous major release of Jitsi and all it did was crash a lot, hopefully this new one's a bit better.
Skype power (Score:1)
The power of Skype is in its network and support. Skype is not open source, nor subject to standards. "Alternatives", such as OoVoo, already exist. Besides, if an "alternative" software tried using the Skype network then Microsoft could block it. This is a waste of time.
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XMPP supports standard extensions for things like voice
Perhaps in theory, but XMPP voice isn't supported by even 5% of the XMPP clients out there. Jingle is supposedly supported in kopete and pidgin but good luck getting that to work or using it for any real-lift purpose
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I'm not sure if I entirely agree, but I'm pretty sure that's what he was trying to say.
Working download URL (Score:3)
https://download.jitsi.org/jitsi/ [jitsi.org]
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Nope, slashdotted.
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I've used Jitsi for over a year, but this new version has fucked me up. It now puts my facebook friends group at the top.
WTF?!? Why the hell would anyone want their facebook friend's list at the top of their IM groups. Just fucking asinine. Also the piece of shit opens the facebook friend's lists whenever anyone logs into it. What stupid behavior.
Cool (Score:1)
> "features such as end-to-end ZRTP encryption
> for audio and video calls"
"Sweet. Show me!"
"What's that guy doing? Oh gross! GROSS!!!"
Features (Score:4, Informative)
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Google hangouts offer free video chat for up to 9 people at a time. My experience using it within the US and between the US and Australia is the sound quality is better than with skype too. Downside is everyone on the call has to have a g+ account.
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Google hangouts offer free video chat for up to 9 people at a time. My experience using it within the US and between the US and Australia is the sound quality is better than with skype too. Downside is everyone on the call has to have a g+ account.
Never managed to get google angouts, or webrtc, working through a proxy.
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I just googled (hah!) the ports it uses - your proxy setup may be screwing with it, although apparently it should eventually get to trying port 80:
"The connection methods are attempted in this preferenced order:
A UDP connection from the participant to Google on ports 19305 through 19309
A TCP connection from the participant to Google on ports 19305 through 19309
A TCP connection from the participant to Google on port 80
A TCP connection from the participant to Google on port 443 (SSL)"
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Downside is everyone on the call has to have a g+ account.
That sound like the same requirements as Skype: you need to register with the service provider.
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True; I just mentioned it so people know they need to have all the call participants set up with G+ accounts in advance - you can't just email everyone five minutes before a scheduled call and suggest using hangouts instead of skype. Just as you can't email everyone 5 minutes before a traditional conference call and suggest using skype unless you know everyone has installed it and set up an account.
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If you only call 1 person you don't need G+ (I don't have it). But get the Google video plugin from Google.com/chat/video and sign into chat at the left pane in Gmail under the folders.
Have made/received 10+ calls, and though getting through may be an issue (the gf gets script errors in Firefox on Ubuntu) you'll find it works once its going.
But now we'll try jitsi!
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"Currently paying for Skype premium to do multiuser video chat."
You wouldn't need Jitsi or Skype to do that if you were on a Mac.
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"Currently paying for Skype premium to do multiuser video chat."
You wouldn't need Jitsi or Skype to do that if you were on a Mac.
Facetime only workie on mac. Jitsi and Skype work on pretty much everything, PC (macos/linux/osx), mobile (android/ios)... If I were on mac I'd still have the same dilemma. I gave up on proprietary software about 10 years ago, and now only use it when there is no other choice.
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"Facetime only workie on mac."
Yes, that's true. Good point.
Now, if only I could find good instructions on how to use Jitsi to call PSTN numbers via Google Voice.
It's supposed to be possible to call out with Jitsi, with only a Google Voice telephone number. But I haven't figured out how. Apparently I did make one call, but I did not hear any ringing or the voicemail message.
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I'm so glad you asked, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software [wikipedia.org]
No Android or IOS client? (Score:2, Insightful)
Pass. Who uses a full PC to make calls?
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Dirty, overweight OSS programmers, that's who.
Re:No Android or IOS client? (Score:5, Informative)
Pass. Who uses a full PC to make calls?
Their FAQ says that and Android client is in the works and will be demoed very soon. As for Apple they claim that Apple's restrictions shuts them out of iOS - but if you have Apple you already have access to FaceTime for all your Apple devices, not that FT can do multi person calls though.
Re: (Score:1)
https://download.jitsi.org/jitsi/nightly/android/
Re:No Android or IOS client? (Score:4, Informative)
Pass. Who uses a full PC to make calls?
Their FAQ says that and Android client is in the works and will be demoed very soon. As for Apple they claim that Apple's restrictions shuts them out of iOS - but if you have Apple you already have access to FaceTime for all your Apple devices, not that FT can do multi person calls though.
The release page also indicates that it can already make video calls to Google Talk users on Android. Guess that's the whole point of using a standard like XMPP...
https://jitsi.org/index.php/Main/News [jitsi.org]
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You can use your smartphone, Android media player, or tablet over WiFi, saving you the monthly contract, your home Internet subscription, and the cost of a whole PC. For a while, I was using voice/texting only on my Android phone (effectively, a few dollars per month) and just used all the other services over WiFi.
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Pass. Who uses a full PC to make calls?
Their FAQ says that and Android client is in the works and will be demoed very soon. As for Apple they claim that Apple's restrictions shuts them out of iOS - but if you have Apple you already have access to FaceTime for all your Apple devices, not that FT can do multi person calls though.
That real-soon-now claim was made for the FOSDEM 2013 conference which occurred over a month ago. There was no jitsi android client at FOSDEM 2013. For what its worth, they've made several real-soon-now claims about an android client for the past couple of years. While there *is* a jitsi android client [java.net], it still lacks a committed user interface, so it definitely is still just a work in progress -- I suspect the devs are waiting for android's platform fragmentation problem to go away. :)
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And sometimes I want to talk to non-Apple users, you know?
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So use a different SIP client on your phone... all this is standardised...
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People who don't have a good cellular connection. I regularly use a laptop to do my video conferencing as my cell phone doesn't have a forward facing camera and the internet connection has a tight cap.
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Most people who make video calls.
The rest uses special clients tailored for video chat which are usually tied to a manufacturer and extremely expensive.
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productive and clueful people who do more with the internet than twaddle their thumbs with angry birds.
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Pass. Who uses a full PC to make calls?
I hate it when there's trouble with the PC and I have to use my phone for Skype. First of all, there's a latency of 1-4 seconds, but that's partly my fault for having an old Android phone. More importantly, I don't like to sit and hold my phone for tens of minutes to point the camera at myself (In fact, I've tried to stick the phone sideways into a roll of kitchen paper just to avoid this, but it wasn't a great success, as it fell over)
SIP and XMPP are open standard (Score:2)
Jitzi is not Skype. It doesn't use it's own proprietary protocol, it uses open standard.
Want to make call with your Andoird smart-phone ?
Get any XMPP or SIP client. (Although a Jitzi-on-Android might happen in the future).
Want to make secure calls?
Just make sure that both ends support ZRTP (for calls) and/or OTR (for messages).
(Jitzi, but also Twinkle(call), Pidgin/Adium (chat), and several others).
Don't want to create yet another account ?
Well use your existing Google (XMPP, works for chat and call) or Fac
WebRTC? (Score:1)
Will it be able to connect to a browser in the future? Because I don't see myself getting everybody I know to install yet another client.
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Here's code that will, along with an asterisk server implementation: http://nerdvittles.com/?p=5321 [nerdvittles.com]
WebRTC - API standard (Score:2)
Will it be able to connect to a browser in the future?
WebRTC isn't a different video call procotol, it's an API enabling Javascript webapp to open streams (for call or whatever they want).
If you manage to find an implementation of XMPP or SIP writen in HTML5/Javscript + WebRTC, then yes you could contact people using a web browser.
(And Google is bound to write a WebRTC version of Google Talk. They are among the developers of WebRTC exactly for this reason).
Because I don't see myself getting everybody I know to install yet another client.
Jitzi is build around open standards. They don't need to specifically install Jitzi.
As long as they have
Java? How about no. (Score:2, Informative)
It's written in Java, and everyone knows Java sucks not only with applets, but also with desktop apps.
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well, if you've decided to hate it, we can't really do anything about it, can we :). Especially not here :)
You could recant your heresy.
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Not that I've become a huge fan, or anything. I'm just saying, I remember when it was excruciatingly horrible, and these days it's closer to mediocre. I suspect part of the reason is that today's hardware can handle a few more CPU cycles and a somewhat larger memory footprint than a typical 486 SX was really comfortably up to.
I'm speaking here from purely a user's perspective. What Java is like for programmers is a separate question.
Jitsi Licensing Problem? (Score:1)
While Jitsi is nice and all, it looks to me like they have a licensing problem. Jitsi has a dependency on ZRTP4J, which is under the GPL, and Jitsi is under the LGPL. Can anyone explain how this is possible without a license exception? And if they have a license exception, where is it documented? and isn't transfered upstream? If so, why not just make ZRTP4J LGPL instead of GPL? And why are they releasing the whole application under the LGPL, and not the GPL anyway?
Extra feature - Telepresence (Score:1)
What's with the hoodies? (Score:2)
n/t
I just gave it a try (Score:1)
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That's right, they should all use sensible names like "Skype", "Yahoo" and "Google", otherwise they'll never catch on.
Nice review here... (Score:3)
http://www.onsip.com/voip-phone-reviews/jitsi [onsip.com]
Downloading it now...let's hope they get it out Android and iOS soon.
(For those saying, "we'll never see this on iOS, well, Apple has "let in" Skype & Viber, so why not?)
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(For those saying, "we'll never see this on iOS, well, Apple has "let in" Skype & Viber, so why not?)
Jitsi is GPL, and Apple's mandatory license terms are incompatible with GPL software.
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Jitsi is GPL, and Apple's mandatory license terms are incompatible with GPL software.
Actually jitsi is LGPL.
Jitsi is Open Source / Free Software, and is available under the terms of the LGPL.
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Thanks for the correction. Conclusion still applies though. App Store doesn't allow shared libraries and has mandatory license terms incompatible with the LGPL.
Not So "Free" (Score:1)
If you want SIP service to call PSTN (landline) numbers, OnSIP (for example) is a hell of a lot MORE expensive than Skype.
Jitsi is the most advanced VOIP program (Score:3)
Re:Jitsi is the most advanced VOIP program (Score:5, Insightful)
it's too bad jitsi wasnt written in decent c/c++. desktop java applications are clunky, slow and take way too much memory than they should.
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[desktop java program]
Thank you. I was wondering why the thing was so huge, took so long to start, and had broken looking fonts.
Jitsi also had all the Yahoo contacts statuses wrong, has a truly horrible default sound setup, and ugly conversation window.
Back to Pidgin :(
ZRTP for Pidgin (Score:2)
Back to Pidgin :(
I'm just hoping that someone develops ZRTP support for pidgin....
Well at least we have OTR support for chat encryption.
(So you can securely chat with your pidgin to someone running pidgin)
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Pidgin has a plugin for encryption, but when I tested it a few years ago it caused problems with long messages and pastes and such and so I stopped using it.
The killer features in Jitsi is the desktop sharing, encryption, and file transfer.
Of those, Pidgin supports file transfer yet it doesn't every work in Yahoo :( And encryption I addressed above. I would love to see both fixed and add that desktop sharing thing.... especially if that also worked on Android too.
OTR is the standard encryption (Score:2)
Pidgin has a plugin for encryption, but when I tested it a few years ago it caused problems with long messages and pastes and such and so I stopped using it.
GAIM-encryption wasn't good, indeed. Including regarding security (problems with deniability).
It's not maintained anymore.
The killer features in Jitsi is the desktop sharing, encryption, and file transfer.
{...} And encryption I addressed above.
The current standard in chat encryption is Off-The-Record OTR [cypherpunks.ca]. This one is the encryption standard that is available out-of-the-box for chat messages in Jitzi. But also in Adium and other modern clients [wikipedia.org].
OTR sits as a layer above the chat messages (it's agnostic to the protocol used to exchange message. As long as the messages are exchanged and both ends use OTR, the transmission will be
SIP and H323 (Score:1)
Why is there still no good SIP and H323 open-source client?