Video Conferencing software

Thanks @alanna that is invaluable information!

@OliverMinter the lack of free code alternatives to proprietary live conference software like Skype is a problem I've been studying for years. A number of new technologies have emerged over the last couple of years, some of them ready for us, others still in the works.

The biggest news of the moment is WebRTC (RealTime Communication), which has been developed mainly by Google and Mozilla as an open protocol, and is currently making its way through the IETF (Internet Engineering TaskForce) standards process. The goss is that Hangouts will eventually switch to WebRTC:
http://bit.ly/1H71JKN

There are a number of WebRTC demos you can use for free. My favourite one so far is Subrosa.io. The entire code is licensed under GNU GPL, and you can use it through a web browser, or for more techy users, compile the client software for use on your desktop.

Another project worth checking out is BigBlueButton.org (v0.9 just released), also a voice/video conferencing platform, but designed as a tool for teaching online courses.

Finally, there is Tox (tox.chat). Still in the very early stages of development, Tox is intended as a freedom and privacy respecting video conferencing app which is totally peer-to-peer (as Skype kind of used to be, but isn't really anymore http://zd.net/1EZc8C1). Tox is both a protocol and a set of platform specific clients for connecting over that protocol.

Edit: corrected Tox link and added clarification about its protocol/ clients.

BTW I agree with @alanna that existing vanilla video conferencing can be used with the same sorts of facilitation tools used in in-person meetings. However, while it's possible to do consensus on email lists and forums without any straw poll engine, having Loomio code in tools like taking and modifying positions (agree, disagree etc) and visualizing them on the pie chart makes the process much more stream-lined. So I also agree with @OliverMinter that video conference software which coded in tools like speaking order, and direct response, would be helpful.

I use talky.io and have better experiences than google hangouts https://talky.io/

They have a live kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/talky/talky-the-first-truly-simple-video-chat

@simontegg - how does talky.io compare to https://jitsi.org/ ? (Another OS candidate, that I have used, with middling success. Talking and side chat went well, screen shares did not.)

The main difference is that you don't need to download anything or install plugins. It just spins up peer connections between the clients visiting the room url.

Its a great example of how software-based on open standards (WebRTC) can have better UX than platform or desktop centric solutions.

Looks like talky.io only allows 5 people to connect at once? Seems limiting.

@alanna their kickstarter is targeting 15 people.

@alanna these kinds of limitations are usually due to the cost of bandwidth, as opposed to the technical limitations of the software. If I remember rightly, Loomio used to have a maximum limit on members in any group for similar reasons. If an organisation set up their own instance of a WebRTC-based system like Subrosa.io or Talk.io, I assume they could support many more people in a chat.

@bobhaugen SIP clients like Jitsi are usually voice only, and the biggest headache is usually getting everyone to figure out how to connect to a SIP server. For voice-only conferencing, Mumble is probably easier to use for now using a server like Mumble.co.nz. The GNU telephony project has built a minimal SIP server, SIPWitch, which users can run on their own computer, and wants to resolves SIP headaches by building a user app on top of that, but don't hold your breath ;)

BTW Just learned that BigBlueButton still has legacy Flash dependencies. Flash is toxic, so I withdraw my endorsement of BBB until it becomes HTML5-compliant.

@simontegg jitsi meet don't need any download. try it here:
https://meet.jit.si
jitsi meet is the best solution right now because bypass webrtc limitations:
https://jitsi.org/Projects/JitsiVideobridgePerformance