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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RE[3]: GTK2 interface now possible
by malu on Wed 4th Nov 2009 19:52
in reply to "RE[2]: GTK2 interface now possible"
Member since:2009-03-31
Well, the GPL contains an exception regarding linking to system libraries, which may be GPL-incompatible.
I doubt "libskype" would count as a system library.
Maybe building a glue library using a GPL-compatible licence that also allows linking to non-free libraries would work?
Member since:
2008-07-15
Um, you've heard of shared objects, aka libraries, right and that you can link to them? It won't matter if the protocol is closed source since the plugin could just link to it. This has already been done with the official Skype client, and that was closed source too. The big difference here is that the protocol could be used without the actual Skype client running.
So, it's not impossible. You might wish it to be impossible, but wishes don't make facts.