Want to use free software to communicate with your family in Christmas 2016?


Was there a friend or family member who you could only communicate with using a proprietary, privacy-eroding solution like Skype or Facebook this Christmas?

Would you like to be only using completely free and open solutions to communicate with those people next Christmas?

Developers

Even if you are not developing communications software, could the software you maintain make it easier for people to use "sip:" and "xmpp:" links to launch other applications? Would this approach make your own software more convenient at the same time? If your software already processes email addresses or telephone numbers in any way, you could do this.

If you are a web developer, could you make WebRTC part of your product? If you already have some kind of messaging or chat facility in your website, WebRTC is the next logical step.

If you are involved with the Debian or Fedora projects, please give rtc.debian.org and FedRTC.org a go and share your feedback.

If you are involved with other free software communities, please come to the Free-RTC mailing list and ask how you can run something similar.

Everybody can help

Do you know any students who could work on RTC under Google Summer of Code, Outreachy or any other student projects? We are particularly keen on students with previous experience of Git and at least one of Java, C++ or Python. If you have contacts in any universities who can refer talented students, that can also help a lot. Please encourage them to contact me directly.

In your workplace or any other organization where you participate, ask your system administrator or developers if they are planning to support SIP, XMPP and WebRTC. Refer them to the RTC Quick Start Guide. If your company web site is built with the Drupal CMS, refer them to the DruCall module, it can be installed by most webmasters without any coding.

If you are using Debian or Ubuntu in your personal computer or office and trying to get best results with the RTC and VoIP packages on those platforms, please feel free to join the new debian-rtc mailing list to discuss your experiences and get advice on which packages to use.

Everybody is welcome to ask questions and share their experiences on the Free-RTC mailing list.

Please also come and talk to us at FOSDEM 2016, where RTC is in the main track again. FOSDEM is on 30-31 January 2016 in Brussels, attendance is free and no registration is necessary.

This mission can be achieved with lots of people making small contributions along the way.