This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/opensource by /u/coolman3475 on 2023-11-09 14:50:39.

Omegle has officially shutdown yesterday for financial and personal reasons from the creator. I do not know of any other site like it, and have searched for a long time. Every other app I have used doesn’t have the same search-by-interest feature or has some shitty token/coin based payment system. With Omegle gone, I don’t see an easy website to easily fill it’s gap. I believe the open source community is capable of creating something equivalent or greater.

I am a computer science student who has been programming for several years and would love to find anyone else interested in starting such a project. This is a time sensitive matter and if the open source community does not jump on this opportunity, a company will.

Element Calls seems to be a potential platform that has a cleaner interface than Omegle, and supports screen sharing. It is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, which is a very permissive license. Element also uses modern technology such as Node.js and Typescript. Right now you can go to their web app, create a call, and invite others via link with no sign-on, so it is easy to experiment with.

The features that must be added include joining a random call with a stranger and add a chat box. Otherwise it is all already built by open source developers and even appears to be encrypted, which is far better than Omegle being very insecure.

Let me know what you guys think. You can check out the github here and experiment with it via the first link.