[JDEV] Videoconferencing with jabber: summary?

[Bart van Bragt]

Mattias Campe wrote:
> So if anybody would like to post a summary for me (which 
> could be handy for everybody), well, then I won't stop you :-).

Sure :D

Richard and Tijl are both convinced that they both have _the_ way to 
solve the conferencing dillema. That's great except for the fact that 
they don't agree with each other and are quite busy with convincing each 
other of the fact that the other person has it all wrong ;)

Anyway.

If we're really going for videoconferencing etc, etc, wouldn't it be 
smart to start some kind of workgroup and get the people from 
GnomeMeeting or some other group that has been working with video/voice 
conferencing into the picture? One problem with the video/conferencing 
stuff is that it's a whole different ballgame that building an IM 
server. So I won't be surprised if we'll end up with a lot of Jabber 
clients that either won't support voice/video at all or would only 
support it in some kind of horrible way because the main focus is on IM. 
Quite a few clients out there already have a lack of development 
capacity, this would only make it bigger.

IMO it would be smart if we would try hard to reduce the amount of wheel 
re-inventing. Please use existing protocols/libraries/components or even 
programs where possible.

Furthermore I really have the feeling that the _user_ is kind of being 
left out of the picture in the whole conferencing discussion. Who is the 
user? What does (s)he want? What can (s)he do? Are they able to setup 
portforwards? Is it confusing if they have to do two different things 
when setting up a 1on1 discussion or a conference? Do they want to add 
someone to a (1on1) conversation?

IMO this whole video/voice deal is _really_ extremely neat and can be 
quite a selling point for Jabber but only if it's done _properly_. This 
means better than MSN/ICQ/AIM. The other thing is that video/voice is 
quite a different ballgame when compared to IM or routing some XML 
around. There are a lot of people out there that have thought long and 
hard about these matters. IMO we should try to get those people involved 
instead of trying to do something that we're not good at :D

IMO a starting point would be to ask the gnomemeeting people how _they_ 
would set this up and why.

Bart