[sf-lug] request for community involvement

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Jim Stockford (jim at systemateka.com):

> Opinions about this posting? Interest in participating? 
> 
> "I came across your community here in SF and I am wondering whether
> you'd be interesting in helping us out. 
> 
> "We're a startup and we're trying to build the no. 1 screensharing tool
> for Linux. We haven't launched yet but the product is ready for testing
> (www.same.io). It works without any plugins, installations, or
> downloads. 

Seems like a thin proprietary wrapper around a standard HTML5 feature
called getUserMedia() .  See:
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/getusermedia/intro/
https://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/getusermedia/screenshare.html

> "I know screensharing is a huge problem to a lot of Linux users...

Eh, seems like an exaggeration, but then, they're trying to sell a
product.  ;->

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_sharing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Desktop_Sharing_Software

The most common problem is one that development of a new Linux tool 
(proprietary or open source) won't address:  People dictating in advance
that they'll be using a particular proprietary tool with secret-sauce 
protocols -- usually GoToMeeting or Cisco WebEx -- and simply expecting
everyone to run it without giving a damn whether their desktop software
can run it.  The people most guilty of this gaffe are the people doing
'webinars', who seem characteristically to assume everyone's able to do
GoToMeeting or WebEx client connections and is thrilled to do so.

A number of years ago, I looked into what was required to run the
GoToMeeting client on native x86 Linux, and posted my findings to the
SVLUG mailing list.  The thing is distribued as Java bytecode, which
means there's no good reason why it should be platform-specific.  And
yet, at that time, they bundled the Java bytecode with platform-specific
'launcher' code like 'g2m_download.exe' for the Win32 variant, rather
than using Java-native launcher technology like WebStart -- so the
result was unusable on Linux despite use of a platform-neutral
programming language.  Way to to, guys!
http://lists.svlug.org/archives/svlug/2009-July/055851.html

Happily, GoToMeeting's design stupidity is a rare exception, and things
like WebEx will happily run on Linux.  See Wikipedia links above for the
general picture.