The GNU Project has announced a new project called GNU Free Call, an open source Skype alternative that will offer anonymous VoIP and will use the GNU SIP Witch server as the back end:


We use the open standard SIP protocol and GNU SIP Witch to create secured peer-to-peer mesh calling networks, and we welcome all participation in our effort.

GNU SIP Witch requires a minimum of system resources so it can be used on cell phones too so it seems the goal is to provide a cross-platform application, the immediate target most probably being Android.

The comments on the announcement reveal that the GUI is going to be a separate application and also, GNU Free Call itself won’t deliver video, however this will be done by other applications such as Ekiga, Empaty and so on:

Video is a function of the user agent, not sipwitch. Since we do not transcode media but let the endpoints negotiate it directly, we do not have to implement code to support it or any other form of media. What we do need to do however is add code to the new gui to discover locally installed clients (such as ekiga, twinkle, empathy, etc, whatever can be supported this way) and then automatically configure your client for you to talk to sipwitch locally.

Read the full release announcement @ planet.gnu.org

Thanks to DownloadSquad for the news!



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