Zoom continues to be our primary tool for hosting geographically distributed video/voice meetings for the ODL open source community.

Perspective

We are aware that some member companies have recently taken action to block the use of Zoom as a mass collaboration platform due to recent scrutiny of Zoom in light of it's an exponential increase of global usage. The vast majority of issues generating headlines have been the result of new or novice users that are unaccustomed to using conferencing tools. Other service providers have either had or still have many of the very same issues, so the issues are not just specific to Zoom.  Other important factors are:

• ODL Zoom sessions are technically open meetings where all are invited to attend.
• There are never internal meetings being held, nor proprietary or business secrets that anyone should ever discuss using any of our community bridges
• Zoom is one of the better platforms for access from within China
• Zoom meetings can be joined via a web browser  just by phone if there are concerns about the Zoom client being installed on a device