[Air-L] non-Zoom platforms....again

[Fred Fuchs]

There are alternatives to Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

We have used Cisco WebEx for some years. If you are organizing your own 
classes or events, it is a viable option. The pricing for small scale 
use is quite reasonable.

Given the increased demand for such products, I expect there will be 
solutions which allow self-hosting. I also expect open source software 
solutions too at some point.

Fred

-- 
Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
FireSabre Consulting LLC
Content Services for Virtual Worlds
Creation, Events, Training, & Simulations


On 7/29/2020 6:41 PM, Alexandre Hocquet wrote:
> Dear AoIRers,
>
> long time lurker, first time poster*. A recent inquiry to the list 
> asking for non-Zoom platforms gave me the idea to ask advice here 
> regarding a project for an opinion piece I have about the recent 
> taking over of online conferencing by Zoom (and Microsoft Teams) in 
> Academia.
>
> My point is that the Covid crisis has led (in France at least, and I'm 
> willing to have the opinion about academics in other countries) to the 
> complete outsourcing to those two corporate platforms for online 
> teaching (and scholarly conferencing), which means
>
> 1) the renouncement to a once functional dedicated national 
> infrastructure (namely, in France, the use of free software Jitsi 
> within the state-sponsored "Renater" academic infrastructure)
>
> 2) the surrendering of Academia to corporations well known to abuse 
> the extraction and commodification of data (Zoom) and well known to 
> "embrace, extend and extinguish" anything within their reach (Microsoft)
>
> My point is that it is completely contradictory to a supposed general 
> institutional trend towards "open science", and that open software is 
> often  forgotten besides open litterature and open data, and that the 
> pandemic has accelerated the disintegration of an academic national 
> and open infrastructure.
>
> So my questions are :
>
> 1) Is anybody aware of an already existing piece expressing that 
> concerns ?
>
> 2) Is anybody willing to share what is the situation in their country 
> regarding this issue ?
>
> Best,
>
>
> * for a little background and as a newcomer presentation, I am a 
> historian of science and my area is the issue of openness within 
> scientific modelling software .
>
>
>
>