[wplug-plan] Private voice chat server?

[Justin Smith]

It took the WPLUG Board of Directors a little while to decide how to hold our 
monthly meeting earlier this week. We'd prefer to avoid using proprietary 
services like Google+ Hangouts and Skype, but IRC isn't always conductive 
to discussion because people type at different rates and it isn't always 
obvious when someone is done talking.

We ended up having the meeting over a conference call. It was nice, but 
then I got to thinking - we can't be the only ones who have faced such a 
situation! Not everybody has access to free conference calling, and even if 
you do, I doubt it's private.

Thanks to prism-break.org, I found out about an open source voice chat 
program called Mumble[1]. Although mainly designed for gamers who need 
a low-latency chat protocol, Mumble is entirely suitable for general voice 
chat thanks to its use of the high-quality (and open/royalty-free!) CELT 
audio codec and /end-to-end encryption/. Clients are available for 
Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android.

The way I see it, we'd operate Mumble as a service for WPLUG members 
and allow them to invite guests. I admit we probably don't /need/ this, but 
it might be fun to try since we're still sitting on a truckload of unused 
bandwidth. 

Is this something you'd use?

--
*Justin S. Smith*
Vice chair/secretary, WPLUG Board of Directors
http://www.wplug.org[2] 

/"Isn't it ironic that the proprietary software developers call us 
communists? We are the ones who have provided for a free market, where 
they allow only monopoly."/
-Richard Stallman

--------
[1] http://mumble.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://www.wplug.org
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