[davidlumley]

I don't know if Mumble (or Ventrilo, or Teamspeak, or Discord) are really comparable.

They require you run your own server (although Discord abstracts that), that everyone know the server details, and that everyone be authenticated for your server in some manner.

They're great for playing video games, but Skype matches up a lot better with what a lot of people use it for – making phone calls.

[usernam]

True, but I'd like to mention that these are still valid options for companies and teams. Not to mention that latency will inevitably be superior with a local server.

I'm not sure there's a way around it. Skype is pretty much centralized now. Alternatives using NAT-piercing solutions never worked as reliably for me, and the ID still needs a central directory anyway.

What we ended up doing for flexibility is letting our mumble server open (passwordless access), but speaking is disabled in the root channel, so it's useless for strangers. Secondary channels are password protected, guests cannot join, but teams can set up their hierarchy as they see fit.

When we invite a guest, we just point him to the mumble installer and our server. When he pops up, we drag him into the right channel. No password necessary. It's a fairly smooth experience. Definitely not as fast as a skype group call the first time, but just as good after that. In fairness, this beats pretty much any dedicated conference system I had to use elsewhere.

The channel permissions in mumble are pretty flexible, so there are multiple workflows possible.