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I would say it's high time an OSS alternative to Skype appeared.

Microsoft will definitely start its Skype Linux-killing campaign very soon.

Yeah, it's not like .ogg isn't great for audio already. Let's get a pidgin plugin already!

Not sure I understand your comment. But ogg, despite how good it is, is not an "alternative" to Skype. It's just a format, not a full-fledged voip program.

Ogg (Vorbis) isn't really intended for live chat, but Xiph's CELT codec is and just recently Skype donated their Silk voice codec to be combined with it to create the IETF Opus codec under royalty free terms. Hopefully that's too far along for Microsoft to kill.

Skype are also the biggest user of VP7 and have recently been championing VP8 as the future, again hopefully Microsoft won't be allowed to alter that.

A truly OSS skype alternative would indeed be welcome. What are the chances it would retain the POTS bridges though? I frequently use Skype to call long distance to land line numbers. I could actually reverse that and have a land line number that forwards to my local Skype if I wanted.

I do see an OSS version being able to match or improve on Skype to Skype functions. Here's hoping that OSS project can also manage to make a business of it and provide access to POTS lines. I'd be happy to give them my $2.95 a month instead of Microsoft.

Given Hackerspaces and community projects that have managed to setup and provide local ISP services, it's possible. Come on all you Hackerspaces out there; get coding some voip and see if you can make it happen.

I'm sure there are a lot of OSS alternatives to skype. The problems with these alternatives are:
1) Quality - sound and video quality over slow connections made skype so loved. I'm sure though that there are products that offer good quality.

2) Market - Skype is not standard in any way but it is the de facto standard.
The problem with chat and VoIP is that you need a program that is compatible with what your friends are using. And since your friends have other friends and so on, you need to convince a hole market to adopt a new program.
Or at least to convince enough people to try a new chat(VoIP) and have to programs with the same functionality running at the same time.

Edited 2011-05-10 14:54 UTC

You don't need to all use the same program. But you do all have to use the same protocols. And you all have to agree on a "central connection point" to find each other. That's where most OSS VoIP/chat systems fall down. And where most user's comprehension falls down ("Do you Skype?" "No, I use Ekiga." "Oh, so I can't talk to you.")

There are lots of OSS VoIP solutions out there. But getting any three of them to talk to each other is the hard part. Especially when you add in "clueless" users.

That's what Skype got right: make it brain-dead (relatively) simple to get an account, install the software, and start chatting with people.

Ekiga ? Google Talk ?

Ekiga, yes. Google Talk isn't opensource, and isn't available for Linux either...

Actually Google Talk is available for linux, it works inside GMAIL via an installable plugin:

http://www.google.com/chat/video

http://www.google.com/chat/voice/

Also, google talk works with pidgin and kopete and it is pretty much open source as it uses Jabber. Not sure about the voice side, but both kopete and pidgin can be used to connect to google talk and both support voice, so I think it is open source.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that

1/GTalk is based on open standards like Jabber/XMPP which anyone can easily implement, and there have been implementations of it in Pidgin/Empathy.
2/There's a version of Google Talk for Linux, in the form of a browser plugin which runs inside of GMail.

Google Talk works over the XMPP protocol.

For the voice/video side works on an extension of the protocol called jingle although it's a bit different than the "official" one (it's opensource anyway as it's under a bsd licence )

Regards

via http://jitsi.org
also: http://www.jitsi.org/index.php/Main/Features

Edited 2011-05-10 09:16 UTC

via http://jitsi.org
also: http://www.jitsi.org/index.php/Main/Features "

You've GOT to be kidding? ..written in Java .. consumes 250 MiB with 3 protocols active and 5 users online.. and i thought Skype was bloated crap!

I guess rewriting Pidgin in Java increases memory consumption by a factor 20!

Edited 2011-05-10 10:23 UTC

via http://jitsi.org
also: http://www.jitsi.org/index.php/Main/Features "

Jitsi is nowhere near the same as Skype.

First of all, it relies on 3rd party IM networks and protocol which means it's bound to have days when it's not working because the API got changed. Also, there's the risk that Microsoft/Yahoo/etc. will just lock these alternatives out of their network completely.

Secondly, it doesn't do phonecalls to, you know, actual phones. That's one of the most important selling points of Skype, that it can place regular calls to cell-phones or regular phones anywhere in the world.

Thirdly, it doesn't do SMS messages either. Some people use Skype for that too.

Fourth, it's is an EVEN bigger pig on resources than Skype is. Geesh.

That's not the case if you use open solutions like XMPP and Jingle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_%28protocol%29).


AFAIK there are (paid) SIP gateways.
I am not familiar with them tho, and a price of such service may be a different story.



I agree.

PS. I just responded to RshPL's claim by providing an alternative for video calls his family could use (other ones: http://altrn.tv/dmBw8x).
(I have no affiliation with Jitsi or any other 3rd party whatsoever, just wanted to help.)

But then you need to figure out what XMPP server you wish to connect to and so on, and THEN get all your friends and family on the same server. That's too much hassle for the general populace to bother with, it needs to have a central server that's used by all.



Again, that is not convenient. Users would have to learn what the hell SIP is anyways and then find someone to provide paid SIP services and so on, and THEN continue to configure the client to use the relevant settings. Not going to happen.



Yeah, there's plenty of alternatives if you're just going to use client-to-client video chat, but as a Skype-alternative Jitsi doesn't come even close.

No, XMPP is decentralized: different parties can use different servers and communicate without any problem (http://xmpp.org/about-xmpp/technology-overview/).

I agree with your other arguments.
End user needs simple, seamless and effortless solution.

Example: Google Talk tries to provide that using interoperable (XMPP/Jingle) technologies. Mobile video calls using Jingle (http://goo.gl/326Dd) are a good step, but there is still a lot to be done there.

I hope Microsoft/Skype takeover will motivate other open solutions to go in that direction too (XMPP/Jingle).

Edited 2011-05-10 12:32 UTC

Try Google Talk

Not available for Linux: http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html

Available for linux, try kopete / pidgin both connect to google talk and both support voice to other google talk users, also works in browsers, See:

http://www.google.com/chat/video
http://www.google.com/chat/voice/

There is also a google talk app available in the chrome market place, which seems to use Flash, but again supports Linux

Also probably the end of Skype for Android...

Also probably the end of Skype for Android... "
And possibly the end of the iPhone version too. I can just see Apple banning Skype because it directly competes with Facetime, and it's now owned by a direct competitor on top of that. Actually, when you consider Apple's attitude, the Android version is probably more likely to stay alive.

"Due to increasing customer requirements and a need to provide the highest quality possible service we have decided to temporarily withdraw support for Skype on some of the less popular platforms. We understand this may prove an inconvenience to some of our customers and we deeply apologize. This decision has been made after careful consideration and we do believe it will allow us to provide even better quality service. In the meantime, you are welcome to try the Skype for Windows 7 Ultimate Professional edition."

it's a play on Microsoft's marketing departments overuse of some words on their packaging.

Kind of like Ultimate Professional for Enterprise Small Business User edition.

I always liked Windows CE Phone Mobile Pocket PC Edition Embedded Compact.

Both are missing my the first, and my favourite:

... for work groups.

What a great tag line that was. I had no idea what a work group was at the time. But it sounded good, working in a group.

And it's showing this by taking money out of its vault and burning it, thus leveling the playing field. This valuation makes its valuation of aQuantive or Yahoo look sane.

Buying Skype doesn't seem like burning money out. Rather it looks like buying out a very significative player and yes, for a lot of money. Which is probably part of the plan.

It was quite significative that MS overtook Google and who else? Facebook maybe. Outmaneuvered on money, not talking.

Buying something at the wrong price does not make a victory. Facebook should be very thankful they didn't take on this debt. $8bn in debt at 5% == $400mn/year.

I mean, Skype has revenues of $750mn or so. Just paying interest requires half of that revenue to be profit. But how much of that is profit? Zero. How long does it take to get that $8bn back? Forever, unless the business can be turned around. Skype is only significant in terms of brand - in terms of business, it's a nonexistent player.

So for MS to get its money back, the first thing is needs to do is radically restructure Skype into profitability. I hope there are smart people figuring out how to do that. Even if they can, I struggle to believe that MS couldn't have used its other brands to get that share for less than $8bn. (That's essentially everything MS has lost in all of online services for the last 5 years - see http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-online-op... .)

The valuations here are just unhinged from reality. Remember when Rupert Murdoch paid $500mn for MySpace? At the time it was a dominant player with a much larger network and that valuation proved to be extremely optimistic. IIRC it's now written down to $100mn, and even that looks high. It's always very speculative to buy something that doesn't bring in cold, hard cash.

Didn't they contract that project out to Novell?

(Zing!!.. couldn't resist)

:) +1

It has been available since 2003, if you believe this web page: http://www.mslinux.org/ :-)

:D

I was right. Seteve Ballmer confirmed that Microsoft will support Linux platform. Yahooooo!

http://tinyurl.com/4xdmnhb

Now. Where is that Linux distro info at microsoft.com?

I have this funny feeling the interface will see a whole new level of terrible once Microsoft start trying to put a ribbon in there.

I don't know any details on how that is/would-be implemented but on first sight but the thought of sending more of my traffic through Google's information harvesting servers makes me pretty leary.

What we really need is something that does end to end encryption under the control of the user; no Certificate Authority racket or "trust us, we'll handle the encryption for you" service provider in the middle like the current mobile phone networks.

With end to end strong encryption, I could have more trust in streaming my data bits through Google or any other provider's servers much like I trust Dropbox when used to host Truecrypt volume files.

I would actually welcome that. Not that I would EVER want Microsoft as my carrier - I'd rather shoves pieces of faeces-drenched glass under my fingernails - but anything to shake up the carriers is welcome by me.

Thanks for that horrific mental image! (yuck)

Anyway, I doubt this is going to cause any impact on the wired and wireless voice carriers. I have a feeling that, as mentioned elsewhere, Skype technology will end up embedded in Windows 8, specifically for use on tablets but probably enabled on any device. By that time T-Mobile will be swallowed by AT&T, and likely Sprint as well by Verizon. That leaves us Microsoft-friendly AT&T vs Android-friendly Verizon, and VoIP concerns will wane in favor of the epic battle between the two carriers for your metered data consumption.

I also don't think they would automatically kill the ports to Linux and other OSes; that would cut out a significant chunk of their Windows customers' contacts. I doubt they will do much to improve performance and features on those ports either though; after all, they have an obligation to their shareholders to make Windows appear to be the superior platform.

And finally, don't forget that Google Voice is still out there, integrates perfectly with Android phones (and fairly well with Blackberry phones as well) and is free for another year in the US. I'd be willing to bet that Microsoft has plans to use Skype to try to take a piece of that pie too.

But they could very well neglect. Leave it functioning but slowly reduce support until it's far enough behind that users have to start giving up on it too. Then they trot out the old "we do not see enough market interest to continue this development branch".

I do truly hope I'm being overly pessimistic.

I hope you are too, and we may both be completely wrong. But Microsoft has a certain reputation...

Anyway it goes though, I don't think it's ever really a good thing when a company that powerful buys up a smaller company. Someone always loses out in the end, and far too often it's the consumer.

I for one am heartbroken that the best cellphone company in the US, a company whose customer support has me believing in "the customer is always right" again, is less than a year away from being chewed up and spat out by AT&T. I plan to leave T-Mobile by the end of the year, when I am free from my contracts. Sadly, I'll likely go to a prepaid service and become my own customer support, since the rest of them don't live up to even AT&T's poor standard.

Me thinks I'll be confirming that I have a copy of the Skype for Deb5 64bit encase there never comes a Deb6 64bit package.

And, AT&T. I know people who still have tramma scars from beign in call centers when the company was baught up by AT&T. I'm empathetic. Enjoy the carrier while you can. Hopefully there is local competition if things take a turn for the worst.

I have a friend who works as a CSM in our local AT&T call center. He advised me to try out Virgin Mobile if I don't want to get swallowed up by AT&T next March. I'm definitely staying away from Verizon; as much as I loathe AT&T I hate Verizon even more. Sprint (parent of Virgin Mobile in the US) has decent coverage in my area so I should be good to go.

I figure by the end of the summer I can afford to break out of my contracts and spend the $200 for a Virgin Mobile Android phone that is more capable than my Cliq, and recoup some of the money by selling off my old devices (Cliq, Blackberry Curve and Nokia Nuron). I'll also be paying about $100 less for the actual monthly service.

With the recent Google anouncements, you may even get timely updates for that new Android device by then. It could be improvements all around.

Rrrrright, because it's not like Microsoft has any experience running a large-scale network that supports realtime communications on a global scale like Xbox Live...

Oh, wait...

How do you figure? They own ZERO Wireless or Wired Backbone.

If they purchase part of the 4G network, thats going on sale, they Will own the rights to use that in the same was as current wireless telcos do. This at a swipe would give them data coverage over 95% of the UK (official estimate).

Calls/sms/MMS all using the skype/internet protocols over their data network. Why would they need the wired network?

Their expirience as an ISP would doubtless be an asset in managing these data networks. Its a question of if they can be cheap enough to make people switch.

Dont get me wrong, we are prob talking a couple more billion of investment, but this is certainly achievable if they were so inclined and would open up a whole new market to Microsoft.

My first reaction: thanks god it's not facebook!
Second: F*ck!
Now: now what?

I don't think the audio codec is important. There's PLENTY of perfectly good audio codecs already available and as far as I know, Skype's one doesn't really provide measurably better quality than the others.

I'd have to agree. I think it's the infrastructure around it and cross platform support that really adds the value. For cross platform, it seems to be pretty close to Keepass and it's 20 or so different supported platforms. For infrastructure, someone would need to at least provide the POTS bridging back end.

Cross platform could be solved by providing a truly open source stack that any OS distro can implement including Win/osX and the mobile platforms.

POTS bridging.. well maybe some company takes interest or some hackerspace has suffciently motivated members. It could suppliment rent and internet connection depending on how much the phone carriers are going to charge for playing nice.

MS already has that and its built into almost every Windows 7 install or downloaded from MS's site (Windows Live Messenger). The user base is also bigger than Skype (about 300 mil). I mean 8.5 Bills is pretty damn steep for a company who could never really figure out how to make money other than to be sold to the highest bidder. I kind of don't see why MS is bothering other than to stop Google and Facebook snapping Skype up. I mean for that kind of money they could build their own (which they already did) and still have plenty of cash to spare. I don't see the end game here.

MS could bundle this with their online SMB offerings. Office 365 already has the tag line "Ready to work, wherever you are."

Here's another clip from the O365 website: "Find and connect with friends or peers from virtually anywhere through rich presence, instant messaging (IM), PC-to-PC audio/video calls, and online meetings. "

PC-to-Landline audio calls, landline-to-Anything calls, etc. are missing from the list. Skype does a good job of filling the void. MS could have bought Vonage and gotten the same capability, but Skype is a better brand name.

Last piece of evidence. Microsoft Lync 2010. Lync is an awful name, and the money MS spend on Skype is a small price to pay to never hear about Lync again.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/online-software.aspx

I was thinking something similar. I don't think Microsoft are interested in Skype as a profit-making business - I think it's about brand and getting it before anyone else does. In the same way "to google" has crept in to regular use, I hear more and more people saying "to Skype". That kind of recognition is hard to build up and/or dislodge.

I can see Skype replacing Messenger and also becoming an integral part of Outlook - a lot of the work has already been done.

Exactly my point before. Shareholders should be angry.
------------------
http://sxsy.co/microsoft-buys-skype"%20rel= http://sxsy.co/microsoft-buys-skype" >

I can't believe that regulators would insist on support for a platform that is largely unsupported by the commercial software industry, has tiny market share, and brings in no money. At some point regulation is just totally unreasonable.

linux makes no money ? You sure ?

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:RHT Here I was thinking redhat was fast becoming a billion dollar business and it only sells Linux..

I should have said, "brings in no money for Skype." I'd be stunned if the income they get from Linux covers its development costs, given the tiny market share and the extreme reluctance of Linux users to spend money in general.

(That said, it's strange that RHT has always been used as the poster child for making money in Linux for most of the last decade. Several other vendors have come and gone, with various levels of implosions. Although RHT is clearly profitable and successful, the lack of peers doesn't support the idea that that the model itself is profitable and successful.)

Any proof of that?

And we are talking about a service here anyway. The Skype client if free, you pay for calls to mobile and fixed phones. Do Linux users not pay their phone bills now? Is there any study about Linux users making less phone calls than others?

Except of course when the average price paid by Linux users in a pay-what-you-want game bundle was double that of the other platforms. http://www.humblebundle.com/

Interesting. And I thought Linux gaming was still living in the shadow of Loki, where a company cherry picked games that were commercially successful on other platforms, only needed to pay the cost of the port, had no real competition, generated intense interest and even a lot of users, but failed to monetize that and ended up going out backwards. Loki has become a case study for anyone thinking of selling commercial software on Linux.

I wonder if, via some perverse mechanism, this has now increased the value of games on Linux due to do a much reduced supply. Strange world indeed.

It always been proprietary ... they open sourced the UI, but the core parts of the program have always been closed.

[sarcasm]How dare Microsoft make money from a product.[/sarcasm]

Edited 2011-05-10 17:24 UTC

+10

Oh Wait a second.

Back in 2001, IE6 was the best browser by far. Not until 2004 when Firefox hit 1.0 was there a browser that came close to the speed and functionality of IE6.

Businesses (quite rightly so) had already become dependant on IE6. Development costs for Netscape compatibility were just too expensive and IE6 was a stable target to develop for.

Many crufty legacy apps exist because of things like cost of replacement is too high ... none of us like it, but in the real world this is how things work.

Microsoft held nobody back ... they have just supported their clients as they promised they would do back in 2001 with Windows XP and IE6 support.

As for Windows XP and Office ... there has been no compelling alternative for customers until MacOSX Tiger (Believe it was about this time Macs started getting some real Market share) and Windows 7 (Which the number of Beta Downloads was larger than Desktop Linux users at the time).

Linux Distros and Developers had since 2001 til about 2009 to get their act together to produce a decent desktop operating system and they squadered their chance. Redhat found out early there was no money to be made in Desktop Linux and changed focus after Redhat 9.


Open Office is simply rubbish compared to even Microsoft Office 2000.

The only people that have forced Microsoft to innovate are Apple,Google and the Mozilla Firefox developers.



Microsoft haven't said yet they will be killing the Linux version. So hold your horses.

Even if they did say kill the Linux version, desktop linux has less than a 1% install base so even if they did kill Linux support, An OSS alternative (many that already exist) won't suddenly become attractive to the vast majority of users. Since other mainstream platforms (i.e. Windows and MacOSX) will still retain their users.

If they killed say Android or MacOSX support then there maybe interest in a OSS alternative to skype, but Android already has google talk, and MacOSX/iOS already has iChat and FaceTime.

So don't count on there being a open-source uprising if Linux support is killed.

Edited 2011-05-10 20:36 UTC

That's a warped version of the events. They participated in standard bodies, but never implemented the recommendation, even when it was based on a Microsoft technology. Like svg. Based on Microsoft's VML and HTML +time, they flatly refused to support it in any way what-so-ever. They kept the crufty half broken predecessors, but never improved them or went to the standards. They held everyone back by not doing anything at all to keep up with the developing standards. Which meant that when a competitor did arise that followed the standards that microsoft itself helped develop, everyone was held back by microsoft.


Your xp argument is also flawed by the lack of compatibility between operating systems. You could not in 2005 switch to any other non-Microsoft program and expect the existing programs to just work. Monopolies that have high start up costs to compete with tend to stick around for a long time, despite a lack of development.

Office...? Not sure why or how that held anyone back for a decade. It could be better, but its fairly decent, but your opinion of open office is about a decade old. Its good now. Office 2000 was decent, but I'd say OO.org is better because of the openess of the file format and the fact that they don't break compatibility with older formats. Access 2000 couldn't open Access 1997 databases without converting them to the 2000 format, which meant any one still using 1997 version was SOL. OO.org will never do that BS.

Which was nothing to do with IE6. There was nothing else worth developing for at the time.

As for SVG ... I never seen it used, I never need to use it on the web ever. I never had a use case where I've needed to use it.

Most websites their code doesn't even pass validation (I run a firefox plugin that validates my markup as develop so I can see instantly whether a website passes). So it nice that we have cool things like SVG etc ... but most



The lack of compatibility was vendors not using the APIs.

I have plenty of programs from the Win98 era that work fine on Vista and 7, wait a sec there is one that doesn't work ... Visual Studio .NET 2003 ... which isn't supported anymore.

I would like to see how many MacOSX programs and Linux programs that require a GUI you could still run from 2004 on modern systems. I guess it nowhere near the number that are working on current versions of Windows.



It isn't decent. It kinda good enough most of the time, but OO is miles behind even Office 2007.



Nobody gives a shit about the openess of document file format except the GNU brigade.

Most businesses roll out updates to office company wide so everyone is running the same version, so it becomes a moot point in 99.9% of circumstances.

This makes no sense. Obviously ie6 could be improved, otherwise they never would have done ie7. They could have done ie 7 and released it ... earlier.



Yeah, thats because up until ie 9, Ie didn't f-ing implement it. So you couldn't use it, because Microsoft was holding everyone else back by not implementing it. Even though they were on the standards committee that created it based off of their technology. Its like complaining that you never saw a use for the internet in 1994 because microsoft didn't have a browser, therefore the internet is worthless.



You didn't understand what I was trying to say. What I meant was that you couldn't switch from windows xp to Fedora and use the same programs. So regardless of how great Fedora Core 1 was, it may not have been practical because of the binary incompatibility.



Except those who have an older version of Microsoft office that can't read the newer versions. As a known "computer guy", I've been repeatedly contacted by people experiencing this problem. People get the latest version of office and save things in a newer format and send that out to others that have older versions that can't read the newer format. It sucks. Telling people to pay an extra $140 per pc to upgrade isn't a good solution for them. Showing them a free program that can open and save in the newer format is.

And why weren't there alternatives? This is exactly how the MS monopoly held back progress. They killed Mosaic with dirty tactics and Netscape by bundling (kill two birds with one stone). Then using their dominance in the market and web development products spread non-standard web sites further locking out competitors.

Notice how much work they put forth on IE until FireFox began to eat into their market share . . .

Monopolies don’t need to put money into advancing a product until a viable competitor force them too.

Where do you get that linux is less than 1% intall base?

I for one feel Microsoft are the less of the three evils: Microsoft, Google, Facebook. I am releived it wasn't Facebook cause then i'd have to get a stupid Facebook account.

"stupid Facebook account."

As opposed to an MSN Live Passport?

At least Microsoft Live passport that isn't associated with your every friend and family member and know everything about you like Facebook, and now they'd know who you are talking to too. TMI.