Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 3rd Nov 2009 19:54 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
We waited a little while with this news, because we wanted official confirmation from Skype before jumping on the internet bandwagon. It's official now, so here we go: Skype has announced that it will release its Linux client as open source. A little late, but welcome nonetheless.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Skype is not even throwing us a bone here. It's more like a few tiny scraps of left over meat.
Ooh, an open source UI. Whoop-dee-doo! So Skype outsources the development of the GUI to the community of FOSS developers.
Meanwhile, they have no intention of freeing the protocols. One has to wonder what the ultra secret sauce is. If the protocol is specified, would it be too easy to set up competing VoIP to land line services with the Skype protocol? This is where Skype pulls their money from. Are they so insecure over the quality of their own offering, that they hide behind lock-in to sustain their business?
It feels like a marketing stunt. Look, we have some Open Sauce too!
Meanwhile they are keeping the walls intact, afraid they lose the only real value in Skype, the huge mass of locked in Windows users who use Skype for VoIP. Windows is where Skype began and here they gobbled up a large group of users, who are used to dealing with closed programs over which they never have control.
Let's be honest, would Skype be a necessary evil on Linux and Mac, if Windows users were predominantly using an XMPP client with libjingle? There are better options out there, but they are only useful if you can use them to contact the persons you want to communicate with.