[Freedombox-discuss] Janus as a video chat service in Freedombox

[Joseph Nuthalapati]

A WebRTC server by itself is not relevant to a FreedomBox user. A
discussion about adding an app to FreedomBox can be very different from
a discussion about packaging an application for Debian.

When we want to consider adding a new app into FreedomBox, we should
think about the app's use cases from the perspective of an end user.

What is the problem that we are trying to solve?
  People need a privacy-respecting video calling/conferencing solution
without the fear of their calls being eavesdropped on by the server
operator.
  Self-hosting the video-conferencing server solves this problem.
End-to-end encryption is a plus.

How does a user expect to use the app?

User experience with current video-conferencing solutions takes two forms:

1. Call your contact from an IM app.
  This is similar to a phone call. The client plays a ring tone to alert
the receiver of the call. Scheduling the call is not required. Let's
call this use case "unscheduled video calling".
   Supporting this use case is already in progress in FreedomBox. We
already have coturn integrated. There is some work remaining to
automatically setup coturn with Matrix Synapse and ejabberd apps.

2. Ask your contact to meet using a meeting URL.
  Scheduling or communication about the meeting is done using other
channels. The app doesn't have to maintain contacts or even need a login
to participate in the video conference. This is the use case of a
scheduled video conference.
  FreedomBox currently doesn't have an app in this category. We already
have coturn server integrated, so we can say that some part of the work
is already done.

From an end-user's perspective, I'd ask questions like the following
about Janus server:

1. Does it have good client apps?
2. How user-friendly is it to send a link from a Janus server to someone
and ask them to meet?
3. Can a mobile-only user use this app effectively?
4. Does it have all the necessary features expected from an app like
this? In other words, will people miss Zoom too much?
5. Is the app already popular so that my contacts don't have a steep
learning curve with it?

In my opinion, a great server application is pretty much useless to a
FreedomBox user if there are no good clients to use it with.
But should we integrate yet another good WebRTC server into Debian? Yes,
absolutely!

Discussing about Janus in the context of FreedomBox feels like
discussing about Nginx or Apache. It's only an infrastructure component.
It doesn't qualify as a FreedomBox app.
coturn might seem like an exception to this rule. But it is only listed
as an (advanced) app to allow for manual setups, since it's not fully
integrated yet.


On 26/11/20 8:15 pm, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> 
> So, Jonas mentioned Janus as a useful video chat alternative to include
> in FreedomBox.  I would love to have a solution working out of the box
> on my Freedombox, available via Pagekite.  What is needed to get it
> working?  Should it be based on the demo available from
> <URL: https://janus.debian.net/ > or what is the recommended solution?
> 

-- 
Regards,
Joseph Nuthalapati

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