Mumble 1.3 VoIP/Chat Program Released With ~3,000 Changes

[starshipeleven]

1. Where are the 3000 updates coming from?

developers and contributors over the 1 year and a half

Have they never been released at all?

Yes, any project needing newer features and bug fixes has compiled from source.

2. Why so much discussion about the confidentiality of information, if you can just change the service provider.

Sorry what the fuck? How in the name of Stallman you can trust any service provider to not leak, in the 21st century.

Any half-assed voip and messaging application is protected by end-to-end encryption so you can use whatever provider you want.

I have been using the services of HotTelecom

That's not what Mumble is doing. Mumble is a Watsapp/Skype/Wechat/whatever replacement, both users must use a client that supports the protocol and connect to a server over the internet.

You are doing SIP, and obviously you can't have end-to-end encryption because landline phone is ancient technology and does not support it.

with good protection of customer data.

How the fuck do you evaluate that, did you run audits on their facilities? Do you know how and where the data is stored, what procedures are in place to avoid data breaches and what (if any) share of information to third parties is in effect?

[profoundWHALE]

The problem is... how do we get people to know and use that alternative, and especially stay there?

I found out about discord via word of mouth. It's easy to set up and run. It has a "friend" system with global accounts. Makes it really useable

[tildearrow]

Yes, let's have a two page micturition derby about Discord's financial model on a Mumble article! This is precisely why I try very hard to avoid threads here and don't participate.

Welcome to Phoronix.

[tildearrow]

On top of that, the inconsistency when using the servers is enough to make me want to go to something else. I'd love it if someone took mumble and combined it with matrix chat functionality to create an open source alternative to discord.

The problem is... how do we get people to know and use that alternative, and especially stay there?

[profoundWHALE]

I used to like Discord because of how quickly I could start talking with a group of people.

I didn't want a gaming store. I didn't want load times of 10+ seconds (not including updates) when using an 8-core CPU and NVMe SSD.

On top of that, the inconsistency when using the servers is enough to make me want to go to something else. I'd love it if someone took mumble and combined it with matrix chat functionality to create an open source alternative to discord.

And for server hosting, all you would need is a check mark on your settings menu that says "yes, use this network connection to provide chat" and let the program automatically decide who should host.

[WaxyMouthfeel]

Yes, let's have a two page micturition derby about Discord's financial model on a Mumble article! This is precisely why I try very hard to avoid threads here and don't participate.

I support a number of users who use Mumble in a way that is orthogonal to what Discord does. 1.3 is a pretty great update for a number of people as it includes native JACK support, if anyone would like to hear about the software in the article.

[tildearrow]

tildearrow
im 100% sure that it’s at least 30% of users that have nitro.

I strongly doubt...

[tildearrow]

You are seriously overestimating the costs, Discord only has activation servers that store account information and are interrogated to establish a point-to-point connection. Anything else is directly between the clients (user-side). Their server infrastructure will literally be affordable for a normal first world citizen.

Similar to what many other companies do, say Teamviewer.

Have you even used Discord? I doubt they use a P2P architecture.

It's entirely possible they do, but again you are vastly overestimating how much you can do with user data or even ads. To actually profit from that you need to have a staggeringly large userbase.

There is no way in hell that they make more than a few millions with only 100-ish million users. There is only so much you can actually mine from each person.

I didn't mention or estimate how much they make from user data. I only estimated how much they make from Nitro subscribers.

[starshipeleven]

If only 1% of its users (130 million) are Nitro subscribers, then that means an income of only $13 million per month, or even lower. I doubt that can cope with the vast amount of users they serve...

You are seriously overestimating the costs, Discord only has activation servers that store account information and are interrogated to establish a point-to-point connection. Anything else is directly between the clients (user-side). Their server infrastructure will literally be affordable for a normal first world citizen.

Similar to what many other companies do, say Teamviewer.

I'm pretty sure they sell our data to other companies, and that is where the revenue is.

It's entirely possible they do, but again you are vastly overestimating how much you can do with user data or even ads. To actually profit from that you need to have a staggeringly large userbase.

There is no way in hell that they make more than a few millions with only 100-ish million users. There is only so much you can actually mine from each person.

[Aeder]

Yes, Discord works very well, is easy to use, very easy to set up and free. But do you really think a private company would pay the running costs of such a service without expecting some kind of compensation ?

To me, this "free" policy is just a way to achieve near-total market domination, then, use this domination to earn money, in a way or another. For now, Discord lives from investments, not profit, but investors will want their money back at some time. Either the company will go bankrupt or it will gain money from something. It can be a cheap subscription, ads, users' data commerce or paid services promotion/lock-in. They may, for example, force people to use their game store, or reduce voice quality for people without premium subscription, or simply add ads to their software.

People should really be more careful about "free" services on the Internet. There is usually some kind of counterpart, present or future, which can be more or less acceptable. I don't know exactly what will append with Discord, but there is a high probability that we will be very happy to have an up-to-date Mumble in the future.

They already do that. "Servers" that don't have Nitro users boosting them have less audio quality settings available, no server banner, less custom emoji slots, no animated server icon and smaller file uploads. Users who are not Nitro also have more limitations like not being able to use custom emojis from other "servers" across all of Discord.

They also earn money from store sales.

tildearrow
im 100% sure that it’s at least 30% of users that have nitro. On top of that, it doesn’t take $1 million/month to serve their 130 million users, let alone $13 million. All they serve is an api. There’s basically 0 processing going on server side that isn’t database related.

im not saying they don’t sell user data, they probably do, but at the same time they’re making bank off of nitro. They don’t *have* to sell user data to pay back the VCs that funded them.

Investors only think of maximizing revenue endlessly even when it's not possible. So it's very likely they *will* sell user data if they don't already.