Re: [Gnucomm-privacy] The saga of private VoIP

[David Sugar]

I wanted to cover a couple of things specifically, and then come back to other
things later tonight...

address@hidden wrote:
> > I am aware that GNU Free Call is being developed, but until it's ready we
> > need working solutions. I'm very interested in what you have been using -
> > what is your current workaround?
> 
> What is the status of GNU Free Call these days?
> 
> > THE PROBLEMS
> >
> >
> > 1) The first is the best way to set up PRIVATE VOIP COMMUNICATION BETWEEN
> > TWO LINUX MACHINES.
> >
> >
> > - The two parties are smart enough and willing to spend time configuring
> > if
> > necessary, although neither party understands the technicalities behind
> > networking protocols beyond the very basic, so the config should be 'run
> > this and you are done and safe'.
> 
> Would you see this being implemented as some sort of script/configuration
> management recipe (chef/puppet)? Or even better, a debian package with
> basic /required questions being asked as part of setup?

I have focused on packaging.  We have pushed things into fedora, and also
maintain our own packaging repository for Debian.  I am happy to look at how
we can do more of this.

I also have been experimenting with auto-configuration, particularly for
enabling autoconfig of sip services and auto generation of sip users with
sipwitch.  We do post sipwitch as a zeroconf avahi service, and have a local
api system over ipc as well that includes config info.  I would love to have
time to modify common clients to support these and perform auto-setup...

> > WHAT I TRIED
> > - Ekiga works but doesn't have encryption, SFLphone I really can't make it
> > call at all. Twinkle I found buggy and it does work but disconnects on its
> > own too quickly, plus it hasn't been updated in a while. Linphone didn't
> > work, don't remember why, and if I recall correctly doesn't have ZRTP
> > encryption. Qutecom I can't make it work either, and I can't make my calls
> > complete with Jitsi. On top of that, only Jitsi has both encryption and a
> > Windows version and could thus be used as a solution to #2 above.

In Fedora (17) both linphone and kopete are now supplied with zrtp support
"enabled" using the GNU ZRTP stack, and I have been working on issues for
these resulting from this as time allows as well as seeing what can be done to
reach a similar level of support for Wheezy.

> So what is your favorite/working SIP client without encryption? Twinkle
> has been best for me in that regard.

Twinkle has not been supported for several years by upstream, and was never
ported from qt3 to qt4.  For this reason it was dropped in Debian wheezy last
month.  If we had time and help we could take over maintaining it, and we do
have complete patches to integrate the most current release of GNU ZRTP with
it. It could be an interesting client to experiment with autoconfig support as
well. 

I should add that Twinkle has actively supported GNU ZRTP since late 2006, as
a kind of plugin, and has a complete GUI for ZRTP session indication.
Certainly it has had an interesting history and some rather well known users
for this reason, including several heads of state...

> > c) My general impression when using any of those is: does it really have
> > to
> > be that difficult? Can't I just log in, add an account, add an user, ring,
> > and talk? Skype is closed source and not free, but we must admit it: they
> > do an excellent job of being simple and quick to use.
>  
> Right.

That is precisely our goal...startup, auto-discover users & services where
possible, and talk.