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Re: IETF 82 Audio Streaming

2011-11-02 14:41:09
On Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:10:52 -0700
Doug Barton <dougb(_at_)dougbarton(_dot_)us> wrote:

On 11/02/2011 01:53, Meetecho IETF support wrote:
Again, my point is that we are not saying you *must* install or use
anything. We're talking about providing an alternative a user *might*
want to use. I don't see any particular reason to forbid it.

Is it possible to default the offering of the applet to off?



The applet is never not started automatically, it is offered only on a 
per-request basis, that is, when you join a session, there's a tab (Integrated 
VoIP) within another Tab (Audio/Video) from where you have to explicitly push a 
button: this button shows a dialog telling you you're about to run an applet, 
and asking you if you're sure you want to do that and only then, if you're 
brave enough to press yes, the applet is started :)

So I'd say it is already as you suggest: nevertheless, to meet your and other 
people's concern about this, we also decided to make the RTSP tab the default 
choice, that is, the default alternative the Audio/Video tab presents. I hope 
this will make it clearer we consider the four options (RTSP, SIP, PSTN, RTP 
applet) just alternatives among which people can freely choose, and really have 
no particular interest in any of you downloading and launching the applet.


As to the holes that may be opened up, please consider that the
source code of the applet is publicly available. Anybody can just
trust us, or go inspecting it (it is a very small piece of software
which basically takes care of media encoding/decoding and RTP
transmission).

Those of us in the ultra-security-paranoid camp will respond to this by
saying that you've offered the source code for *something*, but that (by
its very nature) we have no way of knowing that the java applet you're
serving is in fact the compiled form of the source you've presented.
Please understand, I am not in any way asserting that Meetecho would
pull this sort of bait and switch, just that there are a lot of us who
don't like running random java applets from sites that we (otherwise)
*do* know/trust. Never mind people that we don't know.



This makes sense, and I understand your point: as I understand those who prefer 
not to launch the applet for this or other reasons. Luckily for you all, the 
RTSP and SIP URIs are there for you to access: I myself used the RTSP stream to 
attend all the sessions in Quebec City, as I will to attend the sessions in 
Taipei since I won't be there in person.

What I just want to hightlight again (even though Hadriel already wrote an 
excellent post to explain this) is that the applet is only there because there 
was no other way, for us (until RTCWEB becomes a reality), to make a real-time 
audio/video communication available for people who just want to use their 
browser and don't want to install ad-hoc clients for SIP or RTSP URIs. So we 
actually were thinking we were doing folks a favour, and being bashed for this 
came a bit as a surprise.

Lorenzo


Doug (yet)

-- 

              "We could put the whole Internet into a book."
              "Too practical."

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Meetecho s.r.l.
Web Conferencing and Collaboration Tools
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