Chime instead of Zoom, a modest proposal
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Hi Kate and other SPDX folk,
We have been using Zoom to provide teleconference for SPDX meetings. In light of recent events, Zoom has gotten very popular, and also been failing many security audits, and so many companies and governments have started banning its use.
Amazon has a service very similar to Zoom, called Amazon Chime. Amazon Chime has 1) it's got much better security, 2) it doesn't give your personal, login, and meeting info to the adtech tracking industry, 3) it is gratis with all professional features
to the end of June, and 4) as an Amazonian and this being part of my work, I can provide gratis usage to the SPDX group even after the end of June.
Chime has clients for Win, and for Mac, it runs in Browser on Firefox and on Chrome on all OSes, it has clients for mobile OSes, and also has local and tollfree telephone dialin in most countries.
So, what do you think? Switch to Chime? It's especially a win if we are paying for Zoom.
..m
-- Mark Atwood <atwoodm@...> Principal, Open Source, Amazon |
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Kate Stewart
Hi Mark, Thanks for the generous offer. :-) We're not paying for zoom, however I'm definitely up for doing an experiment during our spdx-tech meeting tomorrow, and if it works for the regular attendees, changing to a system with better security. Can you send me the details for the account to use, and we'll do an experiment during the tech call, and feedback to the wider group. Thanks again! Kate On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 3:31 PM Atwood, Mark <atwoodm@...> wrote:
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James Bottomley
On Mon, 2020-04-13 at 20:31 +0000, Mark Atwood via lists.spdx.org
wrote: Chime has clients for Win, and for Mac, it runs in Browser on FirefoxSo no app for Linux then? As you can appreciate, a lot of us have now been evaluating a whole range of video conference technologies and one of the empirical rules I've been seeing is that solutions that don't provide a Linux client usually can't provide app equivalent functionality on the web either ... and actually there are several solutions (cough, bluejeans, cough) that allegedly provide a linux app but not with the full range of capability and have similar problems on the web. One of the things I will give zoom in the pantheon of proprietary crap for meetings is that they have a full range of supported linux clients, for almost every distribution you can think of, with functionality equivalent to windows and mac. James |
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Kyle Mitchell
I've used the Linux Zoom client nearly every day for a few
weeks now, and less often for several months before that. It's been seamless for all the core talk-and-watch functionality. It does lag a bit behind on lesser features. For example, some of the call-recording options on Windows and Mac still haven't made it over to Linux. So it goes. I don't usually attend SPDX calls, so this is just FYI. If I do end up joining in again, I can always use a phone. Which had sprouted six or seven different apps for VoIP, last I checked. Others have more religious affinity for the Linux desktop. But I haven't seen any libre option that stacks up to Zoom's reliability. Other closed competitors---Hangouts especially---never met that bar, either. -- Kyle Mitchell, attorney // Oakland // (510) 712 - 0933 |
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James Bottomley
On Mon, 2020-04-13 at 20:55 -0700, Kyle Mitchell wrote:
Others have more religious affinity for the Linux desktop.Wow that's a blast from the early part of this millenium. Since Linux now runs over 80% of the world's computing resources, I thought we'd got over stigmatizing people who actually run it on their desktops. It's not for want of others trying: my workplace keeps sending me windows laptops, but they aren't really useful for my daily activities and it turns out that if you don't switch them on very often, they simply stop working and eventually the capital expense isn't worth it. But I haven't seen any libre option that stacks up to Zoom'sWell, I'm glad you asked ... so far the most promising fully open trial is this one: https://bigbluebutton.org/ But the trials are still ongoing so that's by no means the final answer. It's actually somewhat obvious: bigbluebutton was developed for teaching remotely in under resourced schools, so of course they brought it up on a free (as in beer) OS because everything else was cost prohibitive. No one's heard of it because their advertising budget matches the available resources ... James |
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I have not the technical expertise to judge the security level of the
following solution that works with Zoom on Linux: https://www.linux.com/news/how-to-install-and-use-firejail-on-linux/ ---- For some distros like Ubuntu: $ sudo apt install firejail $ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firejail /usr/local/bin/zoom $ which -a zoom /usr/local/bin/zoom /usr/bin/zoom /bin/zoom zoom (to start from the shell) $ firejail --list 3339:username::/usr/bin/firejail /usr/bin/zoom ------ Best, Till |
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Alexios Zavras
The good folks at FSFE maintain a wiki page with Free Software alternatives:
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https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/FreeSoftware4RemoteWorking I should point out that in the SPDX calls we don't actually use video -- it's audio and screen sharing. -- zvr -----Original Message-----
From: Spdx-legal@... <Spdx-legal@...> On Behalf Of James Bottomley Sent: Tuesday, 14 April, 2020 06:35 To: Kyle Mitchell <kyle@...> Cc: atwoodm@...; Kate Stewart <kstewart@...>; Spdx-legal@...; spdx@... Subject: Re: Chime instead of Zoom, a modest proposal On Mon, 2020-04-13 at 20:55 -0700, Kyle Mitchell wrote: Others have more religious affinity for the Linux desktop.Wow that's a blast from the early part of this millenium. Since Linux now runs over 80% of the world's computing resources, I thought we'd got over stigmatizing people who actually run it on their desktops. It's not for want of others trying: my workplace keeps sending me windows laptops, but they aren't really useful for my daily activities and it turns out that if you don't switch them on very often, they simply stop working and eventually the capital expense isn't worth it. But I haven't seen any libre option that stacks up to Zoom'sWell, I'm glad you asked ... so far the most promising fully open trial is this one: https://bigbluebutton.org/ But the trials are still ongoing so that's by no means the final answer. It's actually somewhat obvious: bigbluebutton was developed for teaching remotely in under resourced schools, so of course they brought it up on a free (as in beer) OS because everything else was cost prohibitive. No one's heard of it because their advertising budget matches the available resources ... James Intel Deutschland GmbH Registered Address: Am Campeon 10-12, 85579 Neubiberg, Germany Tel: +49 89 99 8853-0, www.intel.de Managing Directors: Christin Eisenschmid, Gary Kershaw Chairperson of the Supervisory Board: Nicole Lau Registered Office: Munich Commercial Register: Amtsgericht Muenchen HRB 186928 |
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John Sullivan <johns@...>
"James Bottomley" <James.Bottomley@...> writes:
Well, I'm glad you asked ... so far the most promising fully open trialYeah, FSF is running an instance that is being used to successfully teach classes at MIT right now. We'll post more about it soon, but can confirm that it works for 20+, with video and screen sharing. Also have quite a bit of info at https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Remote_Communication. -john -- John Sullivan | he/his/him | Executive Director and VP, Free Software Foundation GPG Key: A462 6CBA FF37 6039 D2D7 5544 97BA 9CE7 61A0 963B https://status.fsf.org/johns | https://fsf.org/blogs/RSS Do you use free software? Donate to join the FSF and support freedom at <https://my.fsf.org/join>. |
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