BigBlueButton

BigBlueButton is a free software web conferencing system for GNU/Linux servers. In addition to various web conferencing services, it has integrations for many of the major learning and content management systems. BigBlueButton is an affiliate member of the Open Source Initiative.

BigBlueButton
Developer(s)BigBlueButton Inc.[1]
Stable release
2.2.31[2][3] / December 17, 2020
Repositorygithub.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton
Written inJava, Grails/Groovy, Scala (back-end), JavaScript/React (web framework) (front-end client),
Operating systemGNU/Linux
TypeCollaborative software, Web conferencing
LicenseLGPL[4]
Websitebigbluebutton.org

Features

BigBlueButton offers the core features one would expect from a web conferencing system: audio/video sharing, presentations with extended whiteboard capabilities – such as a pointer, zooming and drawing – public and private chat, breakout rooms, screen sharing, integrated VoIP using FreeSWITCH, and support for presentation of PDF documents and Microsoft Office documents.

BigBlueButton is a pure HTML5 client. It uses the browser's support for web real-time communications WebRTC to send/receive audio, video, and screen.

Types of users

In a BigBlueButton session there are two types of users: viewer (spectator in some regions) or moderator.

As a viewer, a user may join the voice conference, share their webcam, raise their hand, and chat with others. As a moderator, a user may mute/unmute others, eject any user from the session, and make any user the current presenter. The presenter may upload slides and control the presentation.[5]

The BigBlueButton server runs on Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit and can be installed either from packages[6] or install script.[7]

Architecture

As a pure single web page application, BigBlueButton front-end uses React and the backend uses MongoDB and Node.js. It also uses Redis, the open-source key-value data store software, to maintain an internal list of its meetings, attendees, and any other relevant information.

Security

In October 2020 the German tech news portal golem.de published an article about several vulnerabilities in BigBlueButton. They criticized the unsafe use of LibreOffice, cookies without secure-flag and the use of old Ubuntu and Node.js versions. The main point of criticism is the poor handling of reported vulnerabilities.[8][9]

History

In 2007 the project was started at Carleton University by the Technology Innovation Management program.[10] The first version was written by Richard Alam (it was initially called the Blindside project) under the supervision of Tony Bailetti.[11]

In 2009 Richard Alam, Denis Zgonjanin, and Fred Dixon uploaded the BigBlueButton source code to Google Code and formed Blindside Networks, a company pursuing the traditional open source business model of providing paid support and services to the BigBlueButton community.[12]

In 2010 the core developers added a whiteboard for annotating the uploaded presentation. Jeremy Thomerson added an application programming interface (API) which the BigBlueButton community subsequently used to integrate with Sakai, [13] WordPress,[14] Moodle 1.9,[15][16] Moodle 2.0,[16] Joomla,[17] Redmine,[18] Drupal,[19] Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware,[20] Foswiki,[21] and LAMS.[22] Google accepted BigBlueButton into the 2010 Google Summer of Code program.[23] To encourage contributions from others, the core developers moved the source code from Google Code to GitHub.[24] The project indicated its intent to create an independent not-for-profit BigBlueButton Foundation to oversee future development.[25]

In 2011 the core developers announced they were adding record and playback capabilities to BigBlueButton 0.80.[26]

In 2020 the project released BigBlueButton 2.2, a full rewrite of the client and server to support HTML5.[27]

In March 2020 BigBlueButton 2.2 was awarded by the ENTD – National Body for Digital Transformation as the best web conferencing system and used in the project UNIOPEN approved by the European Commission for Digital Skills and Job Coalition action plan.

Version Release date
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.4 12 June 2009
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.5 21 July 2009
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.60 12 August 2009
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.70 15 July 2010[28]
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.8-beta1 12 September 2011[29]
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.90-beta 15 October 2014[30]
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.0-beta 6 October 2015[31]
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.1 25 May 2017
Current stable version: 2.2 11 March 2020
Legend:
Old version
Older version, still maintained
Latest version
Latest preview version
Future release

The BigBlueButton name comes from the initial concept that starting a web conference should be as simple as pressing a metaphorical big blue button.[32]

Open Source Collaboration Software for Multipoint Video, Audio, and Text [33]

Third party integrations
  • Canvas (Learning Management System)
  • Chamilo (Learning Management System)
  • DoceboLMS (Saas/Cloud Learning Management System)
  • Drupal (Content Management System)
  • ILIAS (Learning Management System)
  • Moodle (Learning Management System)
  • Mattermost (Web-based chat service)
  • Nextcloud (Open Source cloud solution)
  • OpenOLAT (Learning Management System)
  • Sakai Project (Learning Management System)
  • Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware (Content Management System)
  • Qwerteach (Saas / Tutoring platform)
  • WordPress (Content Management System)
  • KampüsProject (Learning Management System)
  • CollaboratorLMS (Learning Management System)

See also

References
  1. BigBlueButton Foundation
  2. Latest release
  3. BigBlueButton 2.2!
  4. "open-source-license".
  5. "BigBlueButton Overview Videos". Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  6. "packages".
  7. "bbb-install.sh".
  8. Hanno, Böck (21 October 2020). "Das große blaue Sicherheitsrisiko". golem.de (in German).
  9. Hanno, Böck (21 October 2020). "File Exfiltration via Libreoffice in BigBlueButton and JODConverter". Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  10. Nettleton, Rob "BigBlueButton" Archived 2010-08-14 at the Wayback Machine, EDC Blog, June 4, 2010.
  11. "Lead Projects". TIM Review. Archived from the original on 1 May 2013. Retrieved 15 August 2012.
  12. Dixon, Fred "Lessons from an Open Source Business" Archived 2012-05-01 at the Wayback Machine, Open Source Business Resource, April 2011.
  13. "Home – Contrib: bigbluebutton – Confluence". sakaiproject.org. Archived from the original on 22 October 2010. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  14. "WordPress Plugin Directory: BigBlueButton". wordpress.org. Archived from the original on 6 November 2010. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  15. "Moodle.org: Modules and plugins: BigBlueButton". moodle.org. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  16. "BigBlueButton releases activity module integration for Moodle 1.9 & 2.0". lmspulse.com. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  17. "BigBlueButton Integration – Joomla! Extensions Directory". joomla.org. Archived from the original on 20 October 2010. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  18. "Redmine – PluginBBB – Redmine". redmine.org. Archived from the original on 3 October 2010. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  19. "BigBlueButton - drupal.org". drupal.org. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  20. "BigBlueButton – Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware". tiki.org. Retrieved 22 January 2011.
  21. "BigBlueButtonPlugin - foswiki.org". foswiki.org. Archived from the original on 17 November 2010. Retrieved 19 November 2010.
  22. "BigBlueButton integration - lamscommunity.org". lamscommunity.org. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
  23. "GSoC Organization for BigBlueButton". appspot.com. Archived from the original on 26 July 2010. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  24. Dixon, Fred. "Minutes from BigBlueButton committers meeting 2010-04-27 – BigBlueButton-dev – Google Groups". Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  25. Dixon, Fred "BigBlueButton Foundation", BigBlueButton Blog, July 12, 2010
  26. Dixon, Fred. "BigBlueButton 0.8-beta-3 released – BigBlueButton-dev – Google Groups". Retrieved 24 November 2010.
  27. Dixon, Fred. "BigBlueButton 2.2". Retrieved 11 March 2020.
  28. bigbluebutton-0-7-is-released.
  29. bigbluebutton-0-8-beta-released.
  30. BigBlueButton 0.9.0-beta now available.
  31. BigBlueButton 1.0-beta Released.
  32. "BigBlueButton : FAQ". BigBlueButton. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  33. Morales, Aurelio F. "Open Source Collaboration Software for Multipoint Video, Audio, and Text", FINAL PROJECT REPORT FOR EEL5718 – COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS, April, 2010.
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