Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation

[Alex G.S.]

Sorry to repeat myself, but like I wrote in my previous post the default
chat client for Fedora Workstation needs much better Office 365 and Lync
integration:

Most organizations and academic institutions are migrating to Office 365 as
> they reduce their in-house physical server count, consolidate licenses and
> go "to the cloud".  These same organizations also have a large inventory of
> existing Windows desktops that could be turned into Fedora Workstations
> instead of taking the expensive route of buying Macs. There's a huge
> potential WIN here to provide major cost-savings to organizations and
> provide a cutting-edge Linux environment that will beat the poorly
> implement UNIX-like environment of Mac OS X.



>
> 2. Empathy/Pidgin currently doesn't support enough features from Lync (now
> Skype for Business) [1] - the Microsoft enterprise communication tool - and
> that's a show stopper.  You can't do video calls, you can't initiate
> meetings and you can't do screen-sharing or file-transfers.



>
> The real problem is integration with enterprise services and that's the
> big challenge ahead for Workstation.



According to the WG product description for Fedora Workstation you want to
target university, enterprise (corporate) and tech-companies and that
pretty much comprises 90% of the users you want to attract. Most users in
the real world (corporate, university or tech-company) use Google Hangouts,
Skype or Lync (now Skype for Business) and in some cases just plain IRC.
For meetings there's typically Goto Meeting which currently has no Linux
client.

[1] http://next.skypeforbusiness.com/


On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 9:35 AM, Ananda Samaddar <ananda.samaddar at zoho.com>
wrote:

> On Sun, 26 Apr 2015 07:18:29 -0400 (EDT)
> Jiri Eischmann <jeischma at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Ananda Samaddar" <ananda.samaddar at zoho.com>
> > To: desktop at lists.fedoraproject.org
> > Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2015 7:29:20 PM
> > Subject: Re: Re: Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation
> >
> > I'm a bit concerned about the enthusiasm for Telegram.  The clients
> > may be FOSS but the server software isn't.  In addition to this the
> > use of a central server is troubling with respect to metadata
> > collection.
> >
> > Has anyone considered Tox?  It's a FOSS replacement for Skype and
> > doesn't rely on a central server. It's still in a pre-alpha state but
> > has several working clients.  I've tested qTox and it works nicely
> > with sound and video through a firewall. There was a Gtk client
> > (Venom) but it's deprecated.
> >
> > A large project like Fedora being interested in Tox could make all the
> > difference and increase traction to help move it towards a stable and
> > feature complete release.  I've noticed several people mentioning OTR.
> > Tox has encryption built in.
> >
> > I could go on about it but the information is on their website and the
> > code is available for perusal.
> >
> > Ananda
> >
> > Tox was also mentioned by several users, but the number was much
> > smaller compared to Telegram. There is a Tox repository available in
> > Copr BTW: https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/gnikandrov/tox-im/
> >
> > The server part of Telegram is closed source, but they've promised to
> > open source it when it's ready. The API/protocol is open, existing
> > clients are open, the server side is promised to be open in near
> > future. I don't think Telegram scores badly in terms of openness.
> > What they're not planning is an infrastructure of independent servers
> > though.
> >
> > Jiri
>
> Therein lies the biggest issues with Telegram: it depends on proprietary
> server code and also federation is not planned.  I consider these to be
> significant problems. Telegram 'promising' to release the code to
> their server is not good enough in my opinion.  I hate to go
> Stallman (although I have the utmost respect for RMS) on you but
> Telegram users are still tied to the perceived and/or actual benevolence
> of the server vendor.
>
> Tox is already p2p and cross platform.  The only cross platfrom FOSS
> voip application that springs to mind is Jitsi.  Tox works through a
> firewall; both my machines have the default firewall settings from the
> netinstall iso, i.e. fairly restrictive.
>
> If popularity is an important criterion then surely Skype would be top
> of the list for inclusion in Fedora and Gnome.  For reasons too obvious
> to state that won't and shouldn't happen.  There appears to be a
> chicken-egg scenario here unfortunately with regards to Tox.
>
> Ananda
>
>
> --
> desktop mailing list
> desktop at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/attachments/20150426/f1b81a8b/attachment.html>