I need some helping doing voice on Spark.
I just got my openfire server up and running and am testing it with some of my employees. I cant, for the life of me, find any instructions on how to voice with my peers. There are no buttons or anything.
How do I voice chat with others?
There must be someone else?
I can set up a million systems that are simple IM integration tools that are 100 times less complicated. If there is no Voice/video… whats the point?
Anyone done this? I keep reading about it in the latest release, but it looks like even the contributors are afraid to answer.
Voice never was the main focus of Spark. There was no video chat support in Spark at all. Where exactly are you reading about it? In the 2.7.0 release blog post it says that the voice chat is broken and the work on fixing it is moving slowly. Sorry if this sounds confusing, but it means that there is no reliably working voice chat support in Spark currently.
A little bit of history. Spark had a voice chat module when it was still a closed source application. Can’t say how it was working as i have never tried it properly back then. Then Spark was “open sourced” and at some point its volunteer maintainer at that time changed the proprietary voice chat library to open source one (to keep all the source open and free under one Apache license). And then it stopped working reliably. Usually sound starts to loop and you can’t chat. Starting with 2.6.x version voice chat was in this state. The same person now tries to build a voice chat module using another open source library. But as usually he is doing it in his spare time and it is a slow paced process (i’m not sure he is even working on this anymore). That’s how open source works, we are all volunteers here with not much free time. Moreover you also need a STUN server (or STUN plugin for Openfire and two external IPs) for it to work. Here’s a doc on this that i made 4 years ago Enabling Call button in Spark 2.6.0 (and above) (STUN settings have been moved to a plugin since then). It sounds and it is tricky.
Options. You can try using Jitsi client which has a built-in voice support (maybe video also, not 100% sure). Or some other client with a voice support. You can also try Openfire Meetings plugin which is made by one of the community volunteers (Dele). But it is working in Chrome browser (video conferencing).
That is unfortunate. I wonder how hard it would be to integrate an open source solution like Mumble into it. I supposed voice chat initiation would need to be handled as creating a “channel” on the back end with some kind of unique identifier.
There is also Big Blue Button, but I dont know what modules they are using.
I’ve been trying to avoid the web based chat rooms. It reduces environment control and user experience. One person on chrome is experiencing the environment in one way and another person on ie is experiencing it another. This is why I have been so desperate to find an open source solution.
Anything is possible with active developers and Spark currently has none. Btw, Openfire Meetings work only in Chrome i think, so every user would have to use the same browser. Though i’ve read recently that latest Chrome update broke something and Dele had to update his plugin. So you can’t be on the same page with the Chrome either (though it usually auto-updates silently).
Is there a gatekeeper? Or project organizer? From what you said it sounds like there is no one at the helm.
I also dont see a sponsor. I dont know if switching to the MIT license would help move development. Do you have any insight why they are doing the Apache 2 license over something like say the MIT license?
My biggest6 beef with browser based workflows is that I want to be able to get other users connected even when the browser is closed. Pop-ups and what not. But that requires a lot more build out than I can justify spending to get a software to do what I want.
Well, as we needed to quickly release 2.7.0 (because Openfire 3.10.0 somehow broke login for 2.6.3) i have pushed for it and asked a few folks here to help with that. I’ve also obtained a merge permission on GitHub (where the source code is) and i have since applied a few simple old patches which were contributed by someone long time ago, but there was nobody to look at them. I’m thinking to do 2.7.1 minor release with these fixes in June maybe. But i’m not a programmer, i can’t review complex patches or do complex coding myself. There is no plan beyond that.
There is no sponsor paying money directly. But Jive Software is hosting this site, forums (on their Jiveon platform), JIRA (bug tracker) and the build system (Bamboo + Fisheye). They are also providing limited tech support if something gets broken with the site or forums.
I don’t know what was the reason behind choosing Apache. I think it was selected over GPL because it is less restrictive. But i’m not an expert on licensing. Can’t say why MIT wasn’t an option. But i don’t think licensing is a major thing. Spark is not very attractive to developers to come work on it. Partly maybe because it is using Swing (outdated Java API for GUI). And probably not many are interested in developing a desktop IM client (there are already dozens of them), especially Java one.
Do you have any insight why they are doing the Apache 2 license over something like say the MIT license?
Apache 2.0 allows some of us to embed Openfire in proprietary solutions
My biggest6 beef with browser based workflows is that I want to be able to get other users connected even when the browser is closed. Pop-ups and what not. But that requires a lot more build out than I can justify spending to get a software to do what I want.
Take a look at using a chrome extension with the “system tray” feature enabled. It allows your web application to run all the time just as Google hangouts does even when the browser has not been opened by the user. The new web notification api (also available in chrome) enables your Android phone to receive notifications for web pages without using a native app. when the user clicks on the notification, your web page is loaded.