Mumble for everyone

[Alan Pope]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for setting this up. It's always made me feel uneasy using
Skype to contact other free software individuals. I like the idea of
us dogfooding a VOIP based communication system rather than rolling
over and using the non-free stuff.

On 28 May 2010 14:13, Mark Shuttleworth <mark at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> As a straw man, how would you feel if we broght up a mumble server just
> for Ubuntu Members? We can do access control based on LP team
> membership, and that's our biggest, most inclusive team. On the upside,
> it's a useful crowd to test with, they all "get" Ubuntu and we know they
> all make a big contribution to Ubuntu. On the downside, it would still
> exclude lots of other people who make a large part of the Ubuntu magic
> happen.
>

Approved members and approved locos (which would include non-members,
but people who are 'in' the ecosystem)? LoCos could benefit from this
immensely as this could help facilitate first-language meetings. There
are three problems I see.

* Recording minutes / URLs / taking votes. Some level of discipline is
required to take notes and record minutes of the meetings.
Alternatively someone could record/archive the audio conversation.
Potential legal issues recording people? (I don't know)
* Accessibility. Kinda goes along with the previous point, but if
there are deaf/mute people in the group then their needs need to be
catered for.
* Technology issues. Often people can spend ages getting their audio
working, wasting time in a meeting. People join and sound like a cylon
or darth vader, which can disrupt the flow also. With IRC it's easy to
ignore people arriving/leaving, not so easy when they bring with them
a heap of background noise or broken audio.

How have you dealt with these issues inside Canonical?

Cheers,
Al.