Re: [tor-bugs] #33700 [Internal Services/Services Admin Team]: audio- and video-conferencing considerations

["Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki" <blackhole@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

#33700: audio- and video-conferencing considerations
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
 Reporter:  anarcat                              |          Owner:  (none)
     Type:  project                              |         Status:  new
 Priority:  High                                 |      Milestone:
Component:  Internal Services/Services Admin     |        Version:
  Team                                           |
 Severity:  Major                                |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                                       |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                                       |         Points:
 Reviewer:                                       |        Sponsor:
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------

Old description:

> With the rise of the coronavirus, even Tor, which generally works
> remotely, is affected because we were still having physical meetings from
> time to time, and we'll have to find other ways to deal with this.
>
> This ticket aims at establishing the problem space ("what we're trying to
> solve") and evaluate possible solutions ("what could fix it"). we could
> follow the sysadmin documentation template:
>
> https://help.torproject.org/tsa/howto/template/#Discussion
>
> which establishes the following criterion:
>
>  * Goals
>    * Must have
>    * Nice to have
>    * Non-goals
>  * Approvals required
>  * Proposed solution
>  * Cost
>  * Alternatives considered

New description:

 With the rise of the coronavirus, even Tor, which generally works
 remotely, is affected because we were still having physical meetings from
 time to time, and we'll have to find other ways to deal with this.

 This ticket aims at establishing the problem space ("what we're trying to
 solve") and evaluate possible solutions ("what could fix it"). we could
 follow the sysadmin documentation template:

 https://help.torproject.org/tsa/howto/template/#Discussion

 which establishes the following criterion:

 == Goals
 === Must have

  * video/audio communication for a group of people of approx 2-10 people
  * chat fallback
  * have a mobile app
  * allow people to call in by regular phone
  * a way for one person to mute themselves
  * long term maintenance costs covered

 === Nice to have

  * Reliable video support. Video chat is nice, but most video chat systems
 usually require all participants to have video off otherwise the
 communication is sensibly lagged.

 === Non-goals

 == Approvals required

 == Proposed solution

 == Cost

 == Alternatives considered

 === mumble

 there are two different puppet modules to setup mumble:

     ​https://github.com/voxpupuli/puppet-mumble
     ​https://0xacab.org/riseup-puppet-recipes/mumble

 still need to be evaluated, but i'd be tempted to use the voxpupuli module
 because they tend to be better tested and it's more recent

 === jitsi

 ansible roles: ​https://code.immerda.ch/o/ansible-jitsi-meet/
 ​https://github.com/UdelaRInterior/ansible-role-jitsi-meet

 there's also a docker container and (messy) debian packages

 prometheus exporter: ​https://github.com/systemli/prometheus-jitsi-meet-
 exporter

 === Nextcloud

 systemli is using this ansible role to install coturn:
 ​https://github.com/systemli/ansible-role-coturn

 === BBB

 no known install procedure, might be messy.

--

Comment (by anarcat):

 i've edited the summary to summarize the discussion of Goals so far along
 with the known possible solutions.

 i'm susprised to read that "reliable video support" is a "nice to have
 have". i am not surprised, however, to see that everything *else* ends up
 in the "must have" section: this is often what happens in those kind of
 exercises, as we want everything.

 i would still encourage folks to consider what is out of scope here. do we
 want whiteboarding for example? or is that a nice to have? how about
 moderation or capacity beyond 10-20 people (say to host a tor meeting)?

 i think the next step here is to do a short inventory of external
 alternatives we could consider, and evaluate costs.

 and if i may make an editorial comment...

 if this was just my call, my gut feeling would be to just setup a mumble
 server:

  1. a lot of collectives run it
  2. it's much *much* simpler to setup than jitsi (there's a debian package
 *and* a puppet module)
  3. many of us are already familiar with it, and those who aren't should
 be able to cross over
  4. it scales

 But that said I understand if people would prefer to have video and are
 worried about the usability aspects of Mumble (which are real).

 I would also like gaba to clarify the scope of the project: is this for
 vegas meetings? for team meetings? for workshops? for the tor meeting? for
 meeting with funders? please file those use cases in the Goals so we have
 a better idea of the feature set required.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/33700#comment:13>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
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