Ekiga 4.0

The Ekiga project unveiled a new stable release of its free software softphone on November 26, its first new update in three years. There are certainly improvements, both in usability and in technical prowess, but as 2013 draws near it is hard to shake the feeling that desktop Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) applications are no longer particularly cutting edge.

New caller

The new release is tagged as Ekiga 4.0, a version number bump appropriate considering some of the larger changes. For example, a lot of work has gone into better integrating Ekiga with GNOME 3, including the replacement of the application's custom icons with standard (and theme-aware) GNOME icons, and use of the new GNOME notification system. The notifications spawned by the application include some nice touches, such as a notification when a new audio device is detected (a common occurrence with USB and Bluetooth headsets). The 4.0 release can also connect to evolution-data-server address books, and uses Avahi to discover other chat clients available on the local network.

Naturally, there are improvements on the multimedia and connectivity front, too. Skypse' SILK audio codec is new, although this does not make Ekiga Skype-compatible, since the project cannot implement Skype's proprietary protocols. Also new are the G.722.1 and G.722.2 audio codecs and partial support for multiple video streams with H.239. For the non-codec-junkies, the more memorable improvements are support for RTP's "type of service" field (a traffic-shaping mechanism) and the SIP service route discovery protocol (which allows service providers to supply information to client applications about proxy routing).

Perhaps the most visible new feature in the 4.0 release is auto-call-answering. The feature is basic at the moment (it is either all on or all off); people who use Ekiga regularly will no doubt appreciate it, but it will be more valuable if it evolves some more flexibility — such as the ability to auto-answer known callers. Ekiga does already support some call-forwarding rules, so perhaps this is not out of the question. On a related note, the release notes indicate that Ekiga 4.0 now both un-registers from the SIP server and publishes the user's presence as "offline" whenever the application is shut down. This was a problem in earlier releases, particularly if one used the same SIP account from multiple locations.

The new release also boasts a new-installation-setup routine that is run at the first start-up (though it can be re-run from the "Edit" menu). It is centered around setting up an account at the ekiga.net service (complete with options for both a free SIP address and a refillable outbound-call account for dialing "real" phones). This is certainly one of Ekiga's strong points; too many other SIP softphones offer no simple way to actually set up an account, which effectively makes a new install incomplete. SIP is not commonplace enough that the average new user already has an active account somewhere, after all. Consider that Mozilla recently learned that the majority of Thunderbird users were surprised to find that a new email account was not built-in to the application. Multiply that factor by a thousand and it approximates the utility of a built-in SIP account.

The setup process itself is pretty painless, with the possible exception of the step that asks the user to select the proper PulseAudio/ALSA audio devices. Despite the best efforts of intrepid audio developers, the automatically populated list of choices is still dominated by obtuse choices like HDA Intel (PTLIB/ALSA) and HDA Intel (1) (PTLIB/ALSA) — good luck deciding between those two — and ALSA options truncated for being too long to fit into the drop-down menu's list (such as alsa_output.pci-000_00_1b.analog-stereo...). If the default settings do not work, the user is immediately stranded in the wilderness.

Phone GNOME

After three years, one could be forgiven for forgetting that Ekiga was still alive and kicking as a project. But the new release is a good one that is worth careful consideration. For the first time, Ekiga actually feels like a GNOME application. In recent years, I have used Jitsi most often as my softphone, but by comparison it has never felt like anything other than an alien invader from the Java realm. But Jitsi retains at least one advantage over Ekiga: it supports call and chat encryption, plus an array of other security features. Newer codecs like Opus and VP8 are nice, to be sure, but one of the few bullet points that proprietary VoIP services like Skype can never match is preserving the user's privacy and confidentiality.

Speaking of Skype, the eBay- investor-group- Microsoft-owned service also surprised Linux users in November when it bumped its Linux client release to 4.1. That still leaves Linux a version behind the other platforms, but it does fix a number of lingering complaints from users — such as implementing support for skype: URIs, conference calling, and stability problems. On the other hand, the new release fully merges Skype accounts into Microsoft's existing MSN/Xbox/Outlook/Hotmail account system, giving the user access to one and all, even if he or she is only (and barely) interested in one of them.

Free software diehards have long objected to Skype's closed protocols (and justifiably so), but ignoring its existence is probably only practical for employees of the Free Software Foundation and the like. For the rest of us, the choice is "install Skype and use it when it is necessary, or repeatedly argue about Skype with friends and family."

Then again, Skype is not quite the hot commodity it was three or four years ago. These days, ad-hoc video chatting is the sweet spot, through Google Hangouts and services of that ilk. That is possible partly because the majority of humanity is already signed in to a Google service whenever at its keyboards, but even for smaller players web-based services may be making standalone SIP clients a thing of the past. Embedding SIP into hardware devices is still a popular alternative to POTS telephone service, but the SIP protocol suite has never been easy to configure, and letting a web service provider handle the details is enticing.

On that front, it is a good thing Mozilla expended its energy pushing for non-royalty-bearing codecs in WebRTC. At least it will be possible for the next generation of VoIP applications to be free software. Of course, Ekiga may surprise us again in a few years by being one of the better alternatives in that fight as well.