Re: Better Video Codecs - was Re: [GnomeMeeting-list] ideas..

["Conrad Beckert" <conrad_b iname com>]

> > Any contributor willing to do it?
>
> What I'm willing to say is that :
...
> Julien is working on :
...
Thanks for the great job you've done and keep doing!

> So I don't see video codecs plugins happening before 2007 if nobody else
> than both of us contribute to them. Either by coding, or financially (so
> that Craig, or Julien, or myself, or anybody else can do it during its
> paid work).
> Do you want to contribute?
Well as long it is not C++ coding yet - here I am :-)

For an community driven application of that scale - intended to communicate -
Gnomemeeting has a rather narrow developer and user base compared with
Projects such as Asterisk, Mplayer or Kopete (just to name a few from
different parts). That is a pity provided that both Linux and VoIP is booming
and Gnomemeeting is a decent and universal app.

To get it ahead one might have to:
1. Improving visibility of Gnomemeeting - attract people who speak at the
usual Linux events (I haven't seen a single Gnomemeeting presentation at the
many events I've been to -> Chemnitzer Linuxtage, Linuxtag (the biggest one!)
- My German froggy vision - certainly other countries have their events too
etc.

2. Network and communicate it to "neighboring" projects such as e.g. Asterisk

3. Get people to actually use Gnomemeeting (which might be a Chicken Egg
Problem if the application is not robust enough for certain tasks)

4. Encourage people to contribute to Gnomemeeting instead of starting their
own project. That's certainly a difficult task, but check this out:
http://www.tipic.com/ (we already know this)
http://www.iglance.com/ (another combination of VoIP and Theora, Windoz only
-not even SIP compatible but "coming up")
http://developer.berlios.de/projects/konference/ (just another SIP video
endpoint that is around for years but doesn't make much headway)
http://www.sip-communicator.org (Java - at least I could experiment a bit with
it.)
http://www.openwengo.org (aaargghh has anyone managed to get it to work?)
http://www.zen13655.zen.co.uk/mythphone.html (at least seen a working Example
at Funkausstellung in Berlin - but no chance to get it to work, huge overhead)
http://www.wirlab.net/kphone/ (well - just another one, video doesn't work
with the Philips cams)
... ad your own mediocre VoIP/video app here ...
forgot: http://www.jabber.org/press/2005-12-15.shtml - another fork in the
market - the latest one...

We are in the situation that despite a multitude of projects, despite a lot of
programmers who are into VoIP, there is no full featured VoIP application
around. Gnomemeeting at least comes close though :-) To many folks are
reinventing the wheel!

The trick would be to join forces (which is the idea behind open source of
course) and to modularise tasks and code (what happens in industry for 150
years) - check this out http://www.fluendo.com/ - another one doíng RTP and
Theora! Noone is supposed to give up his/her (visible) project but recurring
tasks should be done together and put into a nice library, shouldn't they.

I would help building the community - but I'd need fellows to share Ideas with
:-) - on my own I won't get far.

Greetings from Hamburg
Conrad