Source code:
Webex is still a thing? I thought they priced themselves out of existence long ago.
organisations are notoriously slow
Powered by LiveKit
Apparently it’s AI coded? Or maybe not?
What does powered by mean when LiveKit is about AI agents?
Are we letting AI agents meet instead of ourselves?
The linked LiveKit website and linked LiveKit blog post seem completely disconnected. I don’t get it.
Following their link to LiveKit’s blog, it seems LiveKit provides a real-time communication stack with adaptive video encoding. So they’re using it to handle multiple video streams over connections of varying quality. I don’t think it’s mainly about AI, even though that’s LiveKit’s focus.
There are lots of ML models that relate to frame generation (you may have heard of Nvidia DLSS) so the “AI” might not be LLM slop, it might be an actual good application of ML like reducing bandwidth by halving the framerate and interpolating on the client.
Why why why not just use Jitsi ?
People contribute to FSF to support programmers to make important Libre products like this one and give it away , seems so wasteful for a government to fund a whole new different effort
Having used both Jitsi and LiveKit, I get it. Jitsi is great if you use it as it is, but if you want to integrate video conferencing into your own solution and customize everything, LiveKit is the logical choice. (I think it is also much newer then Jitsi, which used to be the only choice.)
If they wanted to integrate a finished product, I would expect them to use Matrix over Jitsi, because it seems to have seen some use in France already.
Also, I think Matrix integrated LiveKit for video over their existing Jitsi integration, so… the ecosystem seems to flock around LiveKit anyway. So maybe the’ll contribute to LiveKit if they find issues with it, and everyone benefits from that.
They rewrote a messenger and the entire office suite. They could’ve collaborated with the Germans in making OpenDesk. Imagine all the dev time going into making Forgejo federated instead of rewriting everything a different way that isn’t interoperable with another government’s tools.
Maybe it has to start with way, every government making their own FOSS tools, features and code getting closer and closer together until they finally merge or dump one FOSS tool over another FOSS tool. 🤷
My thought is: at least its FOSS
Conservatives who grumble about the inefficiency of government spending are not wrong
The problem is what they see as inefficiency. Social services, education, and a bunch of other things that are actually beneficial to society they consider a waste of money. There is overlap in what I consider inefficient and waste, but it is small. This does make the cut though.
It is so frustrating to see how tax payers are funding projects that reinvent the weel over and over. EU can just fund a good open source self hosted option then every country host it for it self.
IMO, it’s a matter of time. They will learn eventually. We’re just at the beginning and mistakes are being made and will continue to be made. However, I’m much happier with them doing is as FOSS instead of some proprietary, closed source crap that has to be rewritten for millions by some external company a politician happens to know.
Baby steps.
Just because it integrates with AI tools doesn’t mean it’s coded by AI.
The AI agents are for taking notes and making transcript.
Is it available for other European citizens?
It seems to be an open source application that anyone can host on a server.
Inb4 MS sues them for using Visio as their product name.
Visio is a common french term for videoconferencing. Maybe it’ll get struck down as long as it doesn’t include diagramming?
Also, will French law allow a service or trade mark on a common term?
Exactly what went through my head
I though WHY? would you call your product that when its already and established brand. I get that its a great name but its been used for years
The Github repo is called “meet”. So maybe they named it Meet then thought, “Oh no, Google will sue us, let’s choose a different name like… Visio!”
They should really call it Visio Zoom Meet for Teams that Excel.
