Farstream is an audio/video conferencing framework based on GStreamer

GStreamer

GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework written in the C programming language with the type system based on GObject.GStreamer allows a programmer to create a variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming and editing...

. The project provides audio/video conferencing for as many instant messengers as possible through a modular design. Telepathy and Farsight constitute the first implementation of the Jingle

Jingle (protocol)

Jingle is an extension to the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol . It implements peer-to-peer session control for multimedia interactions such as in Voice over IP or videoconferencing communications. It was designed by Google and the XMPP Standards Foundation. The multimedia streams are...

  XMPP

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol is an open-standard communications protocol for message-oriented middleware based on XML . The protocol was originally named Jabber, and was developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999 for near-real-time, extensible instant messaging , presence...

 protocol.

The software is open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

, being distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License

GNU Lesser General Public License

The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...

 (LGPL) and is intended to run on POSIX

POSIX

POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...

-compliant operating systems, including Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 but also Windows and MacOS X. It is being used for audio/video conferencing on the Nokia 770, N800, N810 and N900. It is also the VoIP framework used by Meego.

Farsight is under development in the Farsight 2 series. The maintainer is Olivier Crête.

Applications using Farsight 2:

• Pidgin
  Pidgin (software)
  Pidgin is an open-source multi-platform instant messaging client, based on a library named libpurple. Libpurple has support for many commonly used instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to log into various services from one application.The number of Pidgin users was estimated to be over 3...
  
  
• Empathy
  Empathy (software)
  Empathy is an instant messaging client which supports text, voice, video, file transfers, and inter-application communication over various IM protocols....
  
  
• aMSN
  AMSN
  aMSN is a free Windows Live Messenger clone. aMSN attempts to emulate the look and feel of Windows Live Messenger, and supports many of its features...
  
  
• MeeGo
  MeeGo
  MeeGo is a Linux-based open source mobile operating system project. Primarily targeted at mobile devices and information appliances in the consumer electronics market, MeeGo is designed to act as an operating system for hardware platforms such as netbooks, entry-level desktops, nettops, tablet...
  
  
• Gajim
  Gajim
  Gajim is an instant messaging client for the XMPP protocol which uses the GTK+ toolkit. The name Gajim is a recursive acronym for Gajim's a jabber instant messenger. Gajim runs on GNU/Linux, BSD and Microsoft Windows. Released under the GNU General Public License, Gajim is free software...
  
  
• Minbif

External links

• Freedesktop project website