Honestly I’ve used a dozen different conference call apps in the past few months and they all _work_. I still don’t get why zoom is popular, on Linux they want me to install a browser extension just to join a call which is unacceptable when we have webrtc already.

IMO it’s one of those situations where some software becomes popular for reasons (marketing? Network effects?) and people just use it because it’s there. No one can shop for software and that’s why we need open protocols.

If you think webrtc is a replacement for zoom, then I don't think you have seen what many people are using zoom for. I am unaware of any webrtc implementation that can handle 100 people on a video call. Much less 1,000 or 5,000.

Once you get passed a dozen or so video call users in the same meeting, your options diminish quite a bit. I'm not saying zoom is the only option, but there aren't just tons of easy to use options that do that well.

jitsi also just works.

you might like the servicr, but zoom is definitely overvalued, no question about it.

Jitsi works reasonably well on PC, but not on mobile.

Moreover, Zoom has documentation on how to use it, and Jitsi has none. (They have the stubs for documentation, but the content itself is largely missing.

One other thing Zoom has going for it: name recognition. In a crowded market, name recognition is more valuable than the tech.

Two or so years ago a friend set up Jitsi and RocketChat on his server because 2 friends and I were using Discord for studying for exams and he wanted to try out an open source alternative. It was so bad that we stopped using it immediately and went back to Discord - three people click on a room link, two end up in the same room, one is in an empty room; people kept dropping out every minute; one shared his screen, and while one person could see it, the other couldn't; some people heard others, some didn't; and the installer on Windows was so bugged that one person couldn't even run the desktop version and had to resort to the browser version which had its own problems.

Maybe this has improved since but I wouldn't use Shitsi again with Discord as an alternative.

> Two or so years ago

> Maybe this has improved since

Yes.

Great!

Google Meet works, and works faster. One URL, click join, bam you're in. Zoom you have to install (and accept that the CCP will steal your IP).