Jitsi


Jitsi is a collection of free and open-source multiplatform voice, videoconferencing and instant messaging applications for the web platform, Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android. The Jitsi project began with the Jitsi Desktop. 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 Foundation, the University of Strasbourg and the Region of Alsace and it has also had multiple participations in the Google Summer of Code program.

History

Work on Jitsi 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.
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 "".
Jitsi introduced the Videobridge in 2013 to support multiparty video calling with its Jitsi clients using a new Selective Forwarding Unit architecture. Later that year initial support was added to the JitsiVideobridge allowing WebRTC calling from the browser. To demonstrate how JitsiVideobridge 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" 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 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 LookAndFeel, 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.
Atlassian 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. Jitsi is fully funded by 8x8.

Primary projects of Jitsi

The Jitsi open source repository on GitHub currently contains 103 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 multi-party conferences.
;Jigasi: Server-side application that links allows regular SIP clients to join Jitsi Meet conferences hosted by Jitsi Videobridge.
;lib-jitsi-meet: Low-level JavaScript API for providing a customized UI for Jitsi Meet.
;Jidesha: Chrome extension for Jitsi Meet.
;Jitsi: Audio, video, and chat communicator that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber, AIM/ICQ, and IRC.

Jitsi Meet

It is an open source JavaScript WebRTC application and can be used for videoconferencing. One can share desktop and presentations and with just a link can invite new members for videoconference. It can be used by downloading the app or directly in a browser and it is compatible with any recent browser. Every user can use Jitsi.org servers or can download and install the server software on a Linux-based machine.
Key features of Jitsi Meet
It is a video conferencing solution supporting WebRTC that allows multiuser video communication. It is a Selective Forwarding Unit 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 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.
Features
Jitsi supports multiple operating systems, including Windows as well as Unix-like systems such as Linux, Mac OS X and BSD. The mobile apps can be downloaded on the App Store for iOS and on the Google Play Store and F-droid platform for Android. It also includes:
In an April 2020 test of videoconferencing services, US product review website Wirecutter recommended Jitsi Meet as one of its two picks, 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 or Webex."