Unfixed bugs in Big Blue Button continue to make it difficult to use with a Firefox-based browser. This means holding meetings on a BBB server obliges anyone wanting to attend (and at least hear the conversation) to use a Chromium-based one. This has been the situation for at least a year, which suggests that the BBB team are laser-focused on Chrome support, not vendor-neutral support for any web browser.
Chromium is still not recognised as Free Software by the FSF, so I treat it as proprietary software. That, combined with the fact it’s created and controlled by one of the world’s most infamous DataFamers (Goggle) means I wear a full biohazard suit to go anywhere near it ; ) A hard dependence on Chromium code is sufficient reason for to me to advise against using software that is otherwise 100% Free Code.
So as things stand, using BBB to hold out monthly meetups excludes anyone who doesn’t want to install (any more) proprietary spyware on their devices. This is far from ideal. So what can we do about it? Some back-of-the-napkin ideas;
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Is it possible to pipe the voice stream from a BBB conference to an external livestreaming server (eg OwnCast or PeerTube)? Maybe requiring an NZOSS login of some kind to access the stream. That way, people could at least lurk and listen in without having to install a browser based on Chromium.
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I believe public Jitsi Meet conferences can be accessed using some XMPP apps. Does a BBB server allow connections from any non-browser voice/ video apps?
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Another option is to host the meetup using vendor-neutral realtime conferencing software. The most reliable conference voice chat I have experienced over the last couple of years is with Matrix apps like Element (and some of its forks), which have an internal widget for connecting to Jitsi Meet conferences.
