Richard Stallman (RMS) Talks and Secure Transmission of Private Communications in Formats Everybody Can Access With Free Software
More advocacy of Free/libre software to communicate over audio/video (with a person or group) seems timely
Having just finished the AV1 "series" (12 parts), which relates to an upcoming series about GNU and Free software news (we'll probably be covering Quibble and some behind-the-scenes RMS stories), we are hearing constructive suggestions from somebody who was listening to the recent RMS talk video. "The FSF could do a lot more to point people towards BigBlueButton or Jisti-Meet or similar tools," he argues. "It's not enough to say to avoid the proprietary products." (They'd likely say "solutions", even if they're problems and all about vendor lock-in, surveillance, bloat and so on)
Sometimes RMS has proprietary software used by the organiser (e.g. to present slides, TED talk etc.) and it acts as means to discredit him.
This person has recalled that we have some articles we wrote on Techrights talking about that topic with the FOSS tools listed by name. "It'd be worth bringing it up," he says. Some were mentioned before in relation to Skype's death, but "neither have a clear, enumerated list," we are getting told. It has been years since we last did so.
Sometimes RMS does use BigBlueButton, but typically when the FSF runs the show or when the hosts are familiar with it. It's not hard, it is common sense, and as we put it two years ago: "if businesses (and agencies) outsource their internal voice communication to Microsoft Teams instead of self-hosting BigBlueButton, Jitsi-Meet, or even Mumble, then they are exposing those communications to foreign analysis on many levels. One is that communications must pass over national and thus become fair game for any and all foreign surveillance. Another is that the remote servers are accessible by foreign entities, both private and governmental. That's just two for a start."
As the GNU site put it last year: "Microsoft is shutting down Skype on May 5th, 2025. As with other tethered proprietary programs, users have to rely on servers that are controlled by the developer. When these servers shut down, the service disappears. Instead of migrating to the service that Microsoft suggests as a replacement, Skype users should regain control of their communications by switching to one that is based on free software. Jitsi Meet, for example, is appropriate for small video meetings. Anyone can set up a Jitsi server and let other people use it, and indeed many of these are available around the world."
To me, Mumble is the go-to tool. It's light and simple. It is self-hosted and secure.
Maybe the FSF should step up a bit the campaign to use Free software to communicate with one another. █