Page History

Date

Authors: 

•  

  Irina Arkhipets

•  

  Dmitry Bezheckov

•  Yulia Danilova
•  dkandrov
•  Maxim Solodovnik
•  Alexey Fedotov

1. Introduction

Year 2017 was marked by 10th anniversary of the project. To mark highlight this date we've summarized the experience of Russian developers team. OpenMeetings  has become a prominent representative of open web conferencing solutions and  has acquired interesting story and multiple user acceptance. Its example enables to trace how this type of free projects arise, live and evolve.

2. Open-source web-conferencing systems

About five open software solutions for web conferencing are world-wise known. They serve not only as applications, but also as educational specimens, enabling interested engineers to understand the stuff of such software solutions and to create their solutions on their basis. Table 1 below presents the comparative technical characteristics of four known free web conferencing software systems:Table 1 (to be inserted) 

a  optional requirements for extending the system functionality  

b  the latest versions of web browsers include Flash Plugin by default, for older versions it may be necessary to install it

c  presence of a web browser on the client machine is implied

OpenMeetings and BBB

These products are close in terms of software technologies used and the requirements for server and client software. But OM requires only one database for its server part, and for BBB it is required to install at least two different databases. Both systems have mobile applications. The main differences for users are in the interface and suitable operating systems.

MConf

The distinctive feature of this project is that it arose on the base of the BBB project. MConf developers made an additional large component, a web portal that helps to monitor and balance load within web conferencing servers net, thus optimizing it.

WebHuddle

The project is less developed than the three discussed above in both technological and functional aspects. For example, it does not support the transfer of video. It works as browser java applet however java applets technology is not supported by the last versions of browsers by default.

What’s important for user 

Audio/video transfer quality can be reliably compared only by sequentially launching OM, BBB and MCоnf under the same conditions. Their declared parameters do not differ much from each other.

...

Security check. Though the integration and customization through various APIs already has become the market proposal of some closed projects, the securityof the code is a priori advantage of open projects in which all the code can be checked for 100%. In combination with the ability to install on the customer's own server under the control of the desired operating system and use of secure protocols, this gives a complete check and control over the web conferencing channel. For certain categories of customers, security is a crucial factor of choice.

3. OpenMeetings History and Development

The author of the project German developer Sebastian Wagner released the first version of OpenMeetings in 2007. The project has been successfully developed through the introduction to a number of German universities to support the education process.

...

Apart of its popular free license ASF provides free projects with a variety of convenient services, eliminating the need for developers to install a large set of software on their servers and to support the appropriate technical processes. OM project uses almost all of Apache ready-to-use services, which significantly facilitates project workflows, thus allowing to focus more effectively on the development process.

4. OpenMeetings (OM) Functionality, Architecture, Usage tips, WebRTC alternative, Ongoing technical re-factoring, Users variety, Service types   

to be continued

 are described below in according Child pages in their state related to 2017