WebRTC is coordinating an effort to let people call each other and hold videoconferences just by visiting a Web site. If they're successful, Web developers will be able to add these features to their sites just by using some relatively simple JavaScript code. Even better, the audio and video codecs WebRTC uses have free software implementations, and come with patent licenses that offer legal protection to users and developers. This project is still in its early stages; right now, the effort is focused on adding the necessary support to different browsers.
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/skyp ... t-projects
It is not simply an "open-source" replacement for Skype, it is a global Cargo Cult revolution.
You see, there is already FaceFlow ("free group video chat" and more) http://www.faceflow.com/
You can sign up for free on FaceFlow and make video conferencing with your friends and family.
Now imagine that anyone, who has a website, can easily create his own "FaceFlow" and host video conferences.
Any educational institution may easily create own e-learning sites, or add "these features" to their Moodle, or Mahara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahara_(software)
Mahara is a very popular "open-source" Cargo Cult, you can try it for free here http://demo.mahara.org/
It is not true that Cargo Cults always fail. There are successful ones, for example: Moodle, Mahara, LimeSurvey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LimeSurvey
To be successful, a Cargo Cult should meet certain "necessary and satisfactory conditions".
WebRTC was "open-sourced" by Google on June 1, 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC
Google Video Chat is said to be migrating to the "open-sourced" webRTC.
Notice that Google Video Chat failed to become "popular". Windows users, as a rule, do not like Google Video Chat because of low quality of audio and video. There are also problems with "usability", etc.
Google Talk Video Chat plugin does not work with OSS4.
Google has been always with ALSA (because it said to be "very advanced").
It is very probable that Google experts are not competent in audio and video technologies.
This means that WebRTC project may fail like many other Cargo Cults.
There is a little hope that it might be possible to make it work with OSS4.
cesium wrote:adding OSS support (if it's not there) should not be difficult - it was easy to add for mangler... viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4261#p16849
WebRTC is a framework that was open sourced on June 1, 2011 that allows web browsers to conduct real-time video chat.
Its inclusion in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards is supported by Google, Mozilla and Opera.[1][2][3]
It is licensed under the BSD-3 clause license and the code is based on products from Global IP Solutions — a company Google acquired in May 2010.[4][5][6][7] WebRTC uses the iLBC, iSAC, G.711 and G.722 codecs for audio and VP8 for video[8] and work is underway to migrate the google talk video chat plugin to the webRTC framework.[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC
Google battles MicroSkype with 'open' VoIP protocol
Earlier this year, Microsoft purchased popular VoIP services Skype in a deal valued at $8.5 billion, making it the biggest acquisition in Microsoft's history. But Google is taking a very different tack. In addition to adopting Jingle, Google recently open sourced a framework for real-time video and audio inside the browser. Known as WebRTC, the framework is based on technology Google acquired with its $68.2 million purchase of Global IP Solutions (GIPS) last year. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/24 ... to_jingle/
See also: http://sites.google.com/site/webrtc/