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:
2008-07-15
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.
Perhaps the question we all should be asking is this: There are several open protocols such as SIP that can do the exact same thing Skype can do, and many SIP to PSTN servers out there. They're all missing something though, competitive prices for their service. Skype has several subscription plans you can choose from, can anyone name a SIP server that doesn't simply have per-minute charges and has something an average customer might actually want? If someone such as Gizmo took it this step further, since they already have their own client that most non-geeks will use and us geeks can use whatever SIP client we prefer anyway, and offered decent rate plans (e.g. $3/month for unlimited service in the US/Europe/name continent or country here), we might have something other than Skype that is open. It's not Skype's fault they can't open source their protocol as there is work from other parties involved, and it's also not their fault that no one else has set up a competitive alternative. If we want something more open, I know I do, then we need to create it and I do not mean the communication protocols or audio/video codecs.
Edited 2009-11-04 14:43 UTC