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:
2005-07-13
Or, how about, they don't actually own the code and license it for their client? Meaning, they don't have the legal right to open it...?
For some inexplicable reason, when eBay bought Skype, they, apparently, didn't actually acquire the protocol. They license it from the original owners. There's somewhat of a lawsuit going about that right now.
It's not unusual. Software and hardware vendors often license code for their products, that doesn't give them the immediate right to open the code when the "community" demands. Just look at Intel, with all their open source embracing goodness, and the Poulsbo fiasco. Business is as business is.
Having said that, I doubt Skype would open that code, even if they could. Their business is built on that obfuscation, and nobody has been able to commercially replicate it to anything resembling the same success. You may as well demand that Google publish their PageRank algorithm, so that the "community" can help fine tune it for them.
The benefit to the linux community will be that they can incorporate Skype-compatibility into their client of choice. The benefit for Skype is a potentially wider user base. Quid pro quo.
I'm sure everyone would love it if they opened up their protocol completely, but the linux community needs to quit snapping at commercial organizations taking baby steps towards recognizing the advantages of OSS collaboration. Users adhering to the four freedoms in their choice of software should be shunning Skype anyways, but for the pragmatic side of the community who utilize Skype, this is a small win. That's not a bad thing.