From the FAQ : "We are fortunate that our friends at 8×8 fully fund the project. 8×8 uses Jitsi technology in products like Virtual Office. The open source community and meet.jit.si service help to make Jitsi better, which makes 8×8 products better, which helps to further fund Jitsi. This virtuous cycle has worked well in the past and should continue to for many years to come."
If Facebook would be ads-free, free, and open-source, would you use it? I'd be scared as hell. Imagine this line:
> We are fortunate that our friends at GoodCorp fully fund the project. GoodCorp uses Facebook technology in products like GoodCorp Social. The open source community and meet.facebook.com service help to make Facebook better, which makes GoodCorp products better, which helps to further fund Facebook. This virtuous cycle has worked well in the past and should continue to for many years to come."
And keep in mind that Jitsi seems like a more resource-hungry product (real-time video).
Sorry, I thought this is obvious, but I guess I have to re-state my question. The business model is unclear to me, they don't even make money on ads like Facebook, so it might be something worse.
What's the point for them to put all the money in?
Doesn't make sense to me, sorry. I imagine paying for servers to run free Jitsi for all the people is tens of thousands of dollars per month (if not hundreds). Are you saying that it makes more sense than hiring additional developers for that money?
I don't think it's quite as expensive as you might think. Unfortunately I don't have sources right now but from memory the server component mostly handles session management.
Regarding the official Jitsi meet site: "On a plain Xeon server (like this one) that you can rent for about a hundred dollars, for about 20% CPU you will be able to run 1000+ video streams using an average of 550 Mbps!"
Yeah, that'd cost you a substantial amount, probably more than paying for a Zoom subscription. Now imagine someone is just paying for you, for free, no ads. Isn't that weird? All I'm saying.
I am a Linux user and get it. What I don't get is if Linux.Org would start paying my AWS bills, explaining it by saying "it makes Linux better by more people using it". Don't you see an obvious strangeness here?
