Jami (formerly GNU Ring, SFLphone) is a SIP-compatible distributed

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...

softphone A softphone is a software program for making telephone calls over the Internet using a general purpose computer rather than dedicated hardware. The softphone can be installed on a piece of equipment such as a desktop, mobile device, or other comp ...

and SIP-based

instant messenger Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and tri ...

for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

, and Android. Jami was developed and maintained by the Canadian company

Savoir-faire Linux Started in 1999 in Québec, Savoir-faire Linux is specialized in open source software and digital electronics. Savoir-faire Linux is one of the largest open source companies in Canada. Headquartered in Montreal, the company has Canadian office ...

,Free Software Foundation
/ref> and with the help of a global community of users and contributors, Jami positions itself as a potential free

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

replacement. Jami is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

released under the GNU GPL-3.0-or-later. In November 2016, it became part of the

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborati ...

.GNU Ring beta 2 release announcement
/ref> Two account types are currently available, and many of each type can be configured concurrently. Both types offer similar features including messaging, video and audio. The account types are SIP and Ring. A SIP account enables the Jami softphone to connect to a standard SIP server and a Ring account can register (or use an account set up) on the decentralised Jami network which requires no central server. By default, Jami uses a OpenDHT node maintained by

to join the network when the user connects for the first time. However, the application gives users the choice to run this through their own bootstrap server in the advanced settings. By adopting

distributed hash table A distributed hash table (DHT) is a distributed system that provides a lookup service similar to a hash table: key–value pairs are stored in a DHT, and any participating node can efficiently retrieve the value associated with a given key. The m ...

technology (as used, for instance, within the BitTorrent network), Jami creates its own network over which it can distribute directory functions, authentication and

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...

across all systems connected to it.Say Hello to Ring (Savoir-faire Linux)
/ref> Packages are available for all major Linux distributions including

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

, Fedora, and

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

. Separate

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

and

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

versions are available. Documentation is available on Ring's Tuleap wiki.

History

Jami was initially known as SFLphone, and was one of the few softphones under Linux to support

PulseAudio PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD, macOS, as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris operat ...

out of the box. The Ubuntu documentation recommended it for enterprise use because of features like conferencing and attended call transfer.Official Ubuntu documentation
/ref> In 2009,

CIO magazine ''CIO'' is a magazine related to technology and IT. The magazine was founded in 1987 and is now entirely digital. The name refers to the job title chief information officer. ''CIO'' is part of Boston-based International Data Group's enterprise ...

listed SFLphone among the top five open-source

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

softphones to watch.

Design

Jami is based on a MVC model, with a daemon (the model) and client (the view) communicating. The daemon handles all the processing including communication layer (SIP/IAX), audio capture and playback, and so on. The client is a graphical user interface.

D-Bus In computing, D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus") is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, ...

can act as the controller enabling communication between the client and the daemon.

Features

* SIP-compatible with OpenDHT supportOpenDHT project on Github
/ref> * Unlimited number of calls * Instant messaging * Searchable call history * Call recording * Attended

call transfer A call transfer is a telecommunications mechanism that enables a user to relocate an existing telephone call to another phone or attendant console, using a transfer button or a switchhook flash and dialing the required location. The transferred ...

* Automatic call answering * Call holding * Audio and video calls with multi-party audio and video conferencing * Multi-channel audio support (experimental) * Streaming of video and audio files during a call * TLS and SRTP support * Multiple audio codecs supported: G711u, G711a, GSM,

Speex Speex is an audio compression codec specifically tuned for the reproduction of human speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm.Xiph.OrIntro ...

(8, 16, 32 kHz),

Opus ''Opus'' (pl. ''opera'') is a Latin word meaning "work". Italian equivalents are ''opera'' (singular) and ''opere'' (pl.). Opus or OPUS may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Opus number, (abbr. Op.) specifying order of (usually) publicatio ...

G.722 G.722 is an ITU-T standard 7 kHz wideband audio codec operating at 48, 56 and 64 kbit/s. It was approved by ITU-T in November 1988. Technology of the codec is based on sub-band ADPCM (SB-ADPCM). The corresponding narrow-band codec based on ...

(silence detection supported with Speex) * Multiple SIP accounts support, with per-account STUN support and SIP presence subscription *

DTMF Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed ...

support *

Automatic Gain Control Automatic gain control (AGC) is a closed-loop feedback regulating circuit in an amplifier or chain of amplifiers, the purpose of which is to maintain a suitable signal amplitude at its output, despite variation of the signal amplitude at the inpu ...

* Account assistant wizard * Global keyboard shortcuts *

Flac FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

and

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conj ...

ringtone support * Desktop notification: voicemail number, incoming call, information messages * SIP Re-invite * Address book integration in GNOME and KDE *

support *

Jack Audio Connection Kit JACK Audio Connection Kit (or JACK; a recursive acronym) is a professional sound server Application programming interface, API and pair of daemon (computing), daemon implementations to provide real-time, low-latency connections for both audio and ...

support * Locale settings: French, English, Russian, German, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese * Automatic opening of incoming URL * End-to-end encryption used for chat, video and voice * Decentralised (no internet connection necessary)

References

External links

* {{GNOME Software Communication software Free and open-source Android software Free instant messaging clients Free VoIP software GNOME Applications GNU Project software Groupware Instant messaging clients Instant messaging clients that use GTK Online chat Teleconferencing Voice over IP clients that use GTK VoIP software Software that was ported from GTK to Qt

History

Design

Features

See also

References

External links