On 10/5/07, The Fearow fearow00@hotmail.com wrote:
Hey, I'd like to get an exemption to run a copy of Ventrilo (http://www.ventrilo.com/index.php) for use as an alternative to IRC. For a start it will be for Wikinews, although I intend to make it into a general Wikimedia server. I'll make channels available that pretty much align with the IRC ones.
I can answer any questions if necessary.
Ignoring for a moment whatever issue Wikimedia Deutschland may have with someone running a VoIP server on equipment they own:
I think it's a bad idea to run a closed/proprietary VoIP service with limited cross platform support.
If we want to do VoIP stuff we should use Asterisk, which I've maintained before and wouldn't mind helping with. The challenge then becomes making good client software recommendations, which is something that I can't help with for windows/mac users. :) There are, however, a lot of options.
Beyond the advantages of staying in the realm of free/open protocols and software using asterisk has other advantages: It's very easy to tie applications/tools into asterisk. For example, when I ran a demo asterisk server for some Wikimedia stuff I setup an interface that allowed you to listen call a 1800 number and listen to spoken Wikipedia articles, and the interface only took a few minutes to setup.