Discord might be an alternative for team/friend based conversations. They have group calling (don't need to share a server) now. Problem is that it's marketed towards gamers and so might not be fit for purpose for business purposes

Mumble is a better choice since it's open source.

I'm not sure if it's a better choice for everyone. With mumble you'd need to maintain a server, for instance.

If your primary concern is open source then mumble/jabber is probably your solution

Mumble's requirements are fairly low, you could get by with a $3/month VPS or even a RasPi. Maintenance is down to keeping the OS updated, which is trivial on pretty much any VPS Linux install, as well as Raspbian.

If you're truly paranoid there's a Mumble port for OpenBSD, though that obviously wouldn't fit Stallman's definition of Free.

Last time I tried it, you had to do stuff like generate certificates and open ports and while it wasn't too much of a big deal and improved voice quality a lot, everyone wanted to stay on Skype.

Until we moved to Discord. Which has equally good sound quality, a fantastic chat and role system, and the ability for people to just jump into your voice call instead of having to be invited (which was what killed Skype for us, for any number of people over 3).

I'm part of a bunch of guilds for just hanging out and playing video games. But I also moderate two Discord guilds for programming, containing thousands of people.

Discord's pretty sweet, in a way that Skype and Mumble simply can't compare.

I used Discord for a while when I played Rust (post apocalyptic sandbox MMO) and was a member of a clan on there. It worked great, and the Windows client is fantastic. Basically, Slack+TeamSpeak.

Mumble server hosting is ridiculously cheap. No one has to run one unless they think they are going to discuss stuff that is so sensitive that it would be worth someone's time to subvert a hosting company and monitor the channel. ... and then you can pretty much pick the country you want to buy hosting in so as to make that unlikely.

Mumble's server is harder to setup than nothing but it's still pretty minimal

We've been using Mumble for bigger conferences for almost two years now because we couldn't find a better alternative.

We tried Skype which is almost completely broken (used to work fine).

We tried multiple WebRTC solutions like appear.in which only work fine up to three people.

We tried Google hangouts, which worked fine but we didn't like the quality.

Mumble worked fine, but only if people use push-to-talk. Otherwise you get horrible noise. Every scratching goes over the line.

Skype Business supposedly works very well. We don't use it because we don't support Microsoft breaking the regular Skype.

We currently use the audio conferencing feature of (paid) slack. It works extremely well and has great noise reduction.

Stallman won't like it but Facebook Messenger has voice calling built in now and it works very well. I was calling someone in SE Asia from rural Massachusetts recently and the quality was great with very low latency. It felt like a natural conversation given the connectivity challenges on both ends.

I too have been quite pleased with Facebook calling over a 3G connection from the Middle East to North America, though I still find that FaceTime voice calls sound better (pending both parties own apple devices)

At least you should be using Whatsapp calls, which are end-to-end encrypted, and also have very good quality with the data saving option enabled.

Interesting. I can't see myself using it for work though, which the majority of my Skype calls tend to be.

My team has been using appear.in for about two years now (I introduced it to them smug).

http://appear.in/some_words_doesnt_matter <- share with whoever, instant video call

We use Skype for Business at work, however when the boss isn't watching we switch to appear.in since it works much better and doesn't require craptastic software.

SfB is pants. Quality is always crap, UI is terrible, Mac client is constantly behind, there is no really-open interface for Linux and bots, etc etc.

But, the boss will see when you're "available" straight from Outlook, which is where he lives. It's not an IM tool, it's (yet another) instrument of workforce control.

Don't even get me started on the mac client... constantly drops calls, other end complains that sound quality is terrible despite high quality headphones, screen sharing stops suddenly mid presentation, can't see scheduled meeting directly in app, and overall horrible UX.

Also, despite the rigid security policy where I work, the mac client stores my password in the keychain.

Signal has voice calling as well. The bitrate is a bit low for my taste but it's pretty damned reliable, long distance as well.

the begin of the conversation is a bit lacking though, you need to wait few seconds and few "do you hear me?" tests. I don't use it often but happened not hearing the other side in the middle of the conversation, need to investigate this further.

I don't have connection problem with Signal when I use it. The problem I do have is that the call will almost always drop before a few minutes are up.

why are people downvoting this?

You don't need to be Facebook friends to complete a call but I can still see that expectation being an obstacle to establishing one. Is there a space for a very simple WebRTC call application? It seems like everyone is focused on video calling or more full-featured products.

I'd love it if the default was to use some very lightweight WebRTC app where you just created a new link for each conversation.

I don't think it's likely to happen any time soon unfortunately.

Regarding Facebook, it still feels weird, I'm not sure I can put my finger on exactly why. I just want to keep "friends" and "business" totally separate.

How was this service Mozilla once included in their browser called, something from Telefonica? Worked pretty well for me. Maybe they ditched it to early?

No as long as it is not supported by mobile safari, thereby cutting a large swath of situations where such an app would be useful. We've had WebRTC calls as "experimental" for years now in https://awwapp.com/ solely because of this limitation.

Once you invest more in working around this by having native clients, it makes sense for your product to do more.

Discord is working on full P2P video calling. Overall its not a replacement yet, but its very convenient.

There are a lot of games and software communities that use Discord quite productively, significantly better than what Mumble or Teamspeak have ever allowed for. Just having actual textual channels has made it so dev talk about modding, server administration and all things technical is just a few clicks away. Discords devs do impliment features that are useful for other developers, such as code markdown support. And unlike Skype, you can actually talk to the devs in the official Discord Devs server if you catch them. I'm not an important person at all, and have talked to the CEO and half the teams devs casually.

You can do: ```javascript var x = "y"; ```

and it'l syntax highlight. There is a clear roles permissions system, with support for multiple channels both textual and voice, full API support for building bots, and Discord uses their own service for development communication.

Of course its not a one-size fits all, Skype is more business oriented, so it looks more proffessional to use, but Discord is well on its way to be an actually better alternative from a technological standpoint. That sweet P2P video and audio will be great, and they've stated in the past they actually can't host that stuff through their servers, because even just proxying that much video data is way too costly.

Not to say its all perfect, some of the design decisions, such as making it so normal user accounts have the same access to the API as bots do (Though you'l be banned it 'caught'), makes it so users can easily just run a chat spammer. Its a fundamental issue because the program itself works in that manner. They also hate modding and plugin support, with some of the less experienced devs creating tirades against Javascript injection software like BetterDiscord, which allows you to add in custom CSS, and make your own javascript plugins to manipulate the DOM. Even though its incredibly useful, even basic things like changing font size of the program are only doable through that. They very much so have an Apple-esque idea that they know better, but it seems they've made a compromise (so far) that they haven't broken injection abilities yet.

i was thinking about creating a alternative but hardly anyone is willing to pay for that now.

slack probably should be able to create a full replacement for lync, (skype for businnes).

Without an on-premise option you wouldn't be able to get in to most organisations that have Lync deployed. Feature wise it wouldn't be too hard to match, but you might go crazy trying to code Outlook/Exchange integrations.

> Without an on-premise option you wouldn't be able to get in to most organisations that have Lync deployed.

I used to think that, too, but with the rise of cloud offerings like Office 365, many orgs are starting to see that running your own servers for Sharepoint/Exchange/Unified Communication isn't worth it anymore.

Many, perhaps, but zero of those subject to (for one example) HIPAA data sharing rules.