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Jitsi is a collection of
free and open-source 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 ...
multiplatform voice (VoIP), video conferencing and instant messaging applications for the web platform, Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android. The Jitsi project began with the Jitsi Desktop (previously known as SIP Communicator). With the growth of WebRTC, the project team focus shifted to the Jitsi Videobridge for allowing web-based multi-party video calling. Later the team added Jitsi Meet, a full video conferencing application that includes web, Android, and iOS clients. Jitsi also operates meet.jit.si, a version of Jitsi Meet hosted by Jitsi for free community use. Other projects include: Jigasi, lib-jitsi-meet, Jidesha, and Jitsi. Jitsi has received support from various institutions such as the
NLnet The NLnet Foundation supports organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. It was influential in spreading the Internet throughout Europe in the 1980s. In 1997, the foundation sold off its commercial networking opera ...
Foundation, the University of Strasbourg and the Region of Alsace, the European Commission and it has also had multiple participations in the Google Summer of Code program.


History

Work on Jitsi (then SIP Communicator) started in 2003 in the context of a student project by Emil Ivov at the University of Strasbourg. It was originally released as an example video phone in the JAIN-SIP stack and later spun off as a standalone project.


BlueJimp (2009–2015)

In 2009, Emil Ivov founded the BlueJimp company, which has employed some of Jitsi's main contributors, in order to offer professional support and development services related to the project. In 2011, after successfully adding support for audio/video communication over XMPP's Jingle extensions, the project was renamed to Jitsi since it was no longer "a SIP only Communicator". This name originates from the Bulgarian " жици" ( wires). Jitsi introduced the Videobridge in 2013 to support multiparty video calling with its Jitsi clients using a new Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) architecture. Later that year initial support was added to the Jitsi Videobridge allowing WebRTC calling from the browser. To demonstrate how Jitsi Videobridge could be used as a production service, BlueJimp offered a free use of its hosted system at meet.jit.si. On November 4, 2014, "Jitsi +
Ostel Ostel is a commune in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. Population See also * Communes of the Aisne department The following is a list of the 799 communes in the French department of Aisne. The communes coo ...
" scored 6 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. They lost a point because there has not been a recent independent code audit. On February 1, 2015, Hristo Terezov, Ingo Bauersachs and the rest of the team released version 2.6 from their stand at the
Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open-source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and ...
2015 event in Brussels. This release includes security fixes, removes support of the deprecated MSN protocol, along with SSLv3 in XMPP. Among other notable improvements, the OS X version bundles a Java 8 runtime, enables echo cancelling by default, and uses the CoreAudio subsystem. The Linux build addresses font issues with the GTK+ native look and feel, and fixes some long-standing issues about microphone level on call setup when using the PulseAudio sound system. This release also adds the embedded Java database Hyper SQL Database to improve performance for users with huge configuration files, a feature which is disabled by default. A full list of changes is available on the project web site.


Ownership by Atlassian (2015–2018)

Atlassian Atlassian Corporation () is an Australian software company that develops products for software developers, project managers and other software development teams. The company is domiciled in Delaware, with global headquarters in Sydney, Austral ...
acquired BlueJimp on April 5, 2015. After the acquisition, the new Jitsi team under Atlassian ceased meaningful new development work on the Jitsi Desktop project and expanded its efforts on projects related to the Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet. Regular contributions from the open source community have maintained the Jitsi Desktop project. In 2017, jitsi was added as a widget to element.


8x8 (2018– )

In October 2018, 8x8 acquired Jitsi from
Atlassian Atlassian Corporation () is an Australian software company that develops products for software developers, project managers and other software development teams. The company is domiciled in Delaware, with global headquarters in Sydney, Austral ...
.


Primary projects

The Jitsi open source repository on GitHub currently contains 132 repositories. The major projects include: ;Jitsi Meet: Video conferencing server designed for quick installation on Debian/ Ubuntu servers ;Jitsi Videobridge: WebRTC Selective Forwarding Unit engine for powering multiparty conferences ;Jigasi: Server-side application that allows regular SIP clients to join Jitsi Meet conferences hosted by Jitsi Videobridge ;lib-jitsi-meet: Low-level JavaScript
API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...
for providing a customized UI for Jitsi Meet ;Jidesha: Chrome extension for Jitsi Meet ;Jitsi: Known as Jitsi Desktop, an audio, video, and chat communicator application that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber, AIM/ICQ, and IRC.


Jitsi Meet

Jitsi Meet is an open source JavaScript WebRTC application used primarily for video conferencing. In addition to audio and video, screen sharing is available, and new members can be invited via a generated link. The interface is accessible via web browser or with a mobile app. The Jitsi Meet server software can be downloaded and installed on Linux-based computers. Jitsi owner 8x8 maintains a free public-use server for up to 100 participants a
meet.jit.si
Key features of Jitsi Meet * Encrypted communication ( secure communication): As of April 2020, 1–1 calls use the P2P mode, which is
end-to-end encrypted End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a system of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers, Internet providers, malicious actors, and eve ...
via
DTLS-SRTP Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) is a communications protocol providing security to datagram-based applications by allowing them to communicate in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, or message forgery. The DTLS protocol ...
between the two participants. Group calls also use DTLS-SRTP encryption, but rely on the Jitsi Videobridge (JVB) as video router, where packets are decrypted temporarily. The Jitsi team emphasizes that "they are never stored to any persistent storage and only live in memory while being routed to other participants in the meeting", and that this measure is necessary due to current limitations of the underlying WebRTC technology. * No need of new
client software In computing, a client is a piece of computer hardware or software that accesses a service made available by a server as part of the client–server model of computer networks. The server is often (but not always) on another computer system, ...
installation.


Jitsi Videobridge

Jitsi Videobridge is a video conferencing solution supporting WebRTC that allows multiuser video communication. It is a Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) and only forwards the selected streams to other participating users in the video conference call, therefore, CPU horsepower is not that critical for performance.


Jitsi Desktop

Jitsi spawned some sister projects such as the Jitsi Videobridge Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) and Jitsi Meet, a video and web conferencing application. To prevent misunderstanding due to the increasing popularity of these other Jitsi projects, the Jitsi client application was rebranded as Jitsi Desktop. Originally the project was mostly used as an experimentation tool because of its support for IPv6. Through the years, as the project gathered members, it also added support for protocols other than SIP. Jitsi Desktop is no longer actively maintained by the Jitsi team, but it is still maintained by the community. Features Jitsi supports multiple operating systems, including Windows as well as Unix-like systems such as Linux, Mac OS X and
BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berke ...
. The mobile apps can be downloaded on the
App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...
for
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 on the Google Play Store and
F-droid F-Droid is an app store and software repository for Android, serving a similar function to the Google Play store. The main repository, hosted by the project, contains only free and open source apps. Applications can be browsed, downloaded and ...
platform for Android. It also includes: * Attended and blind
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 ...
* Auto away * Auto re-connect * Auto answer and auto forward * Call recording * Call encryption with SRTP and
ZRTP ZRTP (composed of Z and Real-time Transport Protocol) is a cryptographic key-agreement protocol to negotiate the keys for encryption between two end points in a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone telephony call based on the Real-time Transport Protocol. ...
* Conference calls * Direct media connection establishment with the
ICE Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaq ...
protocol * Desktop Streaming * Encrypted password storage using a master password * File transfer for XMPP, AIM/ ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, YIM * Instant messaging encryption with OTR (end-to-end encrypted) * IPv6 support for SIP and XMPP * Media relaying with the TURN protocol * Message waiting indication (RFC 3842) * Voice and video calls for SIP and XMPP using
H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distri ...
and
H.263 H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bit-rate compressed format for videotelephony. It was standardized by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) in a project ending in 1995/1996. It is a member of the H.26x fam ...
or
VP8 VP8 is an open and royalty-free video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008. Initially released as a proprietary successor to On2's previous VP7 format, VP8 was released as an open and royalty-free format in May 2010 after Goo ...
for video encoding * Wideband audio with SILK,
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 ...
, Speex and
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 ...
* DTMF support with SIP INFO, RTP (RFC 2833/RFC 4733), In-band *
Zeroconf Zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) is a set of technologies that automatically creates a usable computer network based on the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) when computers or network peripherals are interconnected. It does not require ma ...
via
mDNS In computer networking, the multicast DNS (mDNS) protocol resolves hostnames to IP addresses within small networks that do not include a local name server. It is a zero-configuration service, using essentially the same programming interfaces, pa ...
/
DNS-SD Zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) is a set of technologies that automatically creates a usable computer network based on the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) when computers or network peripherals are interconnected. It does not require manu ...
(''à la'' Apple's Bonjour) * DNSSEC * Group video support (Jitsi Videobridge) * Packet loss concealment with the SILK and Opus codecs


Reception

In an April 2020 test of video conferencing services, US product review website Wirecutter recommended Jitsi Meet as one of its two picks (after the more feature-rich
Cisco Webex Webex by Cisco is an American company that develops and sells web conferencing, videoconferencing and contact center as a service applications. It was founded as WebEx in 1995 and taken over by Cisco Systems in 2007. Its headquarters are in Sa ...
which it found preferable for large groups and enterprises), stating that Jitsi was "easy to use and reliable" and that "in our testing, the video quality and audio quality were both great—noticeably sharper and crisper than on
Zoom Zoom may refer to: Technology Computing * Zoom (software), videoconferencing application * Page zooming, the ability to magnify or shrink a portion of a page on a computer display * Zooming user interface, a graphical interface allowing for image ...
or
Webex Webex by Cisco is an American company that develops and sells web conferencing, videoconferencing and contact center as a service applications. It was founded as WebEx in 1995 and taken over by Cisco Systems in 2007. Its headquarters are in ...
". In a follow up review in November 2020 Wirecutter lowered its previous rating, stating that Jitsi was, other than Google Hangouts, "the best, easiest-to-use free services you can find", but also pointed out that "the video and audio quality were both acceptable, though our panelists rated them among the lowest of all the services we tested". Jitsi has been well adopted in not-for-profit tech sector as default alternative to corporate tools. In mid March 2020 popular
Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of th ...
-based tech NGO Framasoft reported that their Jitsi servers were even overloaded by use of state institutions. Jitsi has been test-used as Wikimedia Meet in Wikimedia Foundation on Wikimedia Cloud Services since spring 2020, with high adoption rates initially but mixed reviews.


See also

* Comparison of instant messaging protocols *
Comparison of instant messaging clients The landscape for instant messaging involves cross-platform instant messaging clients that can handle one or multiple protocols. Clients that use the same protocol can typically federate and talk to one another. The following table compares gener ...
*
Comparison of VoIP software This is a comparison of voice over IP (VoIP) software used to conduct telephone-like voice conversations across Internet Protocol (IP) based networks. For residential markets, voice over IP phone service is often cheaper than traditional public swi ...
*
Comparison of web conferencing software This list is a comparison of web conferencing software available for Linux, macOS, and Windows platforms. Many of the applications support the use of videoconferencing. Comparison chart Terminology In the table above, the following term ...
* List of free and open-source software packages *
Wowza Streaming Engine Wowza Streaming Engine (known as Wowza Media Server prior to version 4) is a unified streaming media server software developed by Wowza. The server is used for streaming of live and on-demand video, audio, and rich Internet applications over I ...
* Session Initiation Protocol


References


External links

* {{Portal bar, Free and open-source software 2003 software AIM (software) clients Cross-platform free software Free and open-source Android software Free instant messaging clients Free software programmed in Java (programming language) Free VoIP software Free XMPP clients Instant messaging clients programmed in Java MacOS instant messaging clients Portable software Videoconferencing software programmed in Java Videotelephony Voice over IP clients programmed in Java VoIP software Web conferencing Windows instant messaging clients WebRTC