Jitsi's first release was in 2003. Zoom was founded in 2011.<p>So, more accurately, Zoom is the costly, proprietary, privacy-invading alternative to Jitsi.
I haven't used Zoom and I'm not going to because of all the privacy/security issues that I've read about. I tried Jitsi met (<a href="https://meet.jit.si" rel="nofollow">https://meet.jit.si</a>) for the first time yesterday for a team meeting with 11 people and it worked pretty well. We had the Brady-bunch display of heads and could hear each other clearly.<p>If you're going to try it, I do suggest having a trial run in small groups first because your browser may/may not be happy giving webcam/mic permissions. A few people had to switch to the Brave browser and give camera/mic/autoplay permissions before it worked.
This has been getting a lot of attention lately. My friend reddit requested r/jitsi, as that it was abandoned, and we've already got quite a few new posts.<p>Unfortunately, we're not experts in Jitsi, we just installed it on a shared server. We're hoping to build a community there.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/jitsi/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/jitsi/</a>
We have been trying to use it for a department meeting with 50+ people. It didn't work even with video off and low bandwidth mode. The maximum number of participants is about 20, which is not bad. It works perfectly for small meetings in the order of 10.
Too bad the desktop client is no longer maintained. It can be used to do VoIP to any phone number. We are still using it, but we have a lot of problems on linux because it needs oracle java. Also there are no mobile clients.