To properly explain this one, it's important to first distinguish the various "real time" use cases. All use cases need chat, most need audio and screensharing. However, there are some "key distinctive features" which make some tools great at one use case, but poor for another. Some solutions have variations. For example, Adobe has Adobe Connect Meetings, Adobe Connect Learning, Adobe Connect Webinars.

Realtime collaboration use cases chart

Type	Predominant mode	Key distinctive features	Typical app
Ongoing Team collaboration on projects	1 to 1, many to many or emergent	Presence, and can escalate to audio / video / screensharing as needed	Skype
Meetings / conference calls	Many to many	Meeting notes (meeting agenda, and live collaborative note taking for decisions)	Etherpad + phone call, or Skype
Webinars / Scheduled Course	1 to many	Presentation and whiteboard	BigBlueButton
Community presence and support	many to many	web interface and desktop/mobile clients	IRC
Help desk for team members	1 to 1, but can be transferred	Share screen and remote control Easier to install software on their computer.	TeamViewer
Help desk for customers	1 to 1, but can be transferred	To route request to someone who is available. Canned responses. Difficult to install software on their computer.	Openfire Fastpath
Remote Management	1 to no one or 1 to 1	Remote login and management, even unattended	VNC / Guacamole

We picked Openfire for the following reasons:

XMPP support, and thus presence
WebRTC support (via inclusion of Jitsi Meet)
Great admin panel
Vast feature set

We ultimately want Openfire / WikiSuite to be awesome at covering all the use cases above.

Why not BigBlueButton

While Openfire Meetings and BigBlueButton broadly share the same feature set (videoconferencing, screensharing, etc), there are fundamental difference.

BigBlueButton is a distance education tool.

So the focus is a one to many.
No presence feature (it's for a scheduled class, and not ad hoc collaboration)
No XMPP support
Still in 2017, the Flash version is the main one, and the HTML5 version is not ready for prime time

Why not Etherpad

Too few features
No XMPP support

Why not Jitsi Meet

Jitsi Meet is part of the solution, but alone is not sufficient to cover the desired use cases
- Jitsi Meet is part of Atlassian HipChat

Why not Apache OpenMeetings

Apache OpenMeetings is an interesting option with a diversity of paid support options and quite a few features, however, the focus is more about scheduled meetings or classes than ongoing collaboration. For example, XMPP is not supported.

WebRTC support?

Why not WebHuddle

Why not Spreed

Why not Hubl.in

Hubl.in as part of http://open-paas.org/ is a newer option. Social networking + videoconferencing + realtime collaborative editor + others.
XMPP support?

Why not Tox

Why not Retroshare

Retroshare is very interesting

But no XMPP
Serverless aspect of Retroshare doesn't have huge value for us because WikiSuite is a server, and we have Syncthing for file sync.
Retroshare is more focused on disseminating files, than on collaborating on files

http://retroshare.net/

Why not Zulip

Not based on XMPP
Lots of chat features but what about videoconference?

Why not Otalk

So—tl;dr: The only pieces we are not open-sourcing are the UI, glue code, and operationalized infrastructure—but that’s it!

Source: https://blog.andyet.com/2015/06/09/what-is-being-open-sourced-from-talky/

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History: Why Openfire

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