Apache OpenMeetings

What Apache OpenMeetings does

Apache OpenMeetings is a web conferencing and collaboration server from the Apache Software Foundation. Beyond audio, video and screen sharing (a window or the whole desktop, with remote control), it adds groupware features that most meeting tools leave out: a file explorer with private and public drives, a calendar that sends email invitations and syncs with CalDAV and Google Calendar, and a private message center.

Its rooms are built around whiteboards. A room can hold several of them, with drawing tools, text and clipart, and documents in PDF, DOC, ODT, PPT and other formats can be imported and annotated. Moderators decide who may use audio, video, the whiteboard and screen sharing, and can run polls. Sessions can be recorded and downloaded as MP4 files.

Integrations and administration

OpenMeetings is often used inside other systems. The project lists plugins for Moodle, Sakai, Jira, Confluence, Joomla, Drupal, Bitrix, SugarCRM and Redmine, and exposes REST and SOAP APIs. One installation can serve several organizations, users can log in with LDAP or Active Directory and OAuth2, and Asterisk integration connects rooms to a VoIP phone system.

Self-hosting Apache OpenMeetings

OpenMeetings runs on Java 21 (older Java runtimes are not compatible) with an embedded Apache Tomcat, and uses Kurento Media Server 7.3.0 or later for audio and video, which you install separately first. The embedded H2 database is meant for demos; production installs use MySQL, PostgreSQL, IBM DB2, Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server. Document conversion and recordings rely on optional tools: LibreOffice or OpenOffice, ImageMagick, GhostScript, FFmpeg with libmp3lame and libx264, and SoX.

The documented minimum is a 2 GHz processor and 4 GB of RAM; 2 to 4 CPUs at 2 GHz or more and 8 GB of RAM are recommended. After installing Kurento, you unpack the release archive, run the startup script and finish the setup in a web installer. NAT and port settings are documented separately, and a TURN server is needed for clients on restrictive networks. Building from source uses Maven.

Hosted version

The Apache project does not run a hosted service. OpenMeetings is self-hosted only.

Limitations

The interface looks older than newer browser meeting apps, and the Java stack plus a separately operated Kurento server take more effort to run than a single-binary tool. Documents and recordings need several external programs. The community is smaller and moves more slowly than the leaders in this category; recent commits are mostly maintenance and dependency updates. End-to-end encryption is not part of the documented features.

Who it suits

OpenMeetings suits organizations that want meetings combined with file drives, a calendar and messaging on their own servers, especially if they need ready-made plugins for Moodle, Jira or Confluence, or LDAP and multi-organization administration under Apache governance. For a classroom-focused tool with an active community, compare BigBlueButton.