Nov 02 2009

Skype open source. Not!

Published by Stef at 6:04 pm under business, eng

Skype open source? Reading the full announcement on Skype blog:

[...]Having an open source UI will help us [...]

So, it’s not Skype being open sourced, but it’s only the UI. The full sentence should be:

Having an open source UI will help us further our [Skype's] plans to monopolize the Voice Over IP market with a proprietary and secret protocol that nobody can interoperate with. [Evil laugh]

I wish Google released a fully free and open source Gtalk, server included.

Share this post:
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Identi.ca
  • Ping.fm
  • StumbleUpon
  • TwitThis
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • FSDaily

Tags: , , , , , ,

6 responses so far

6 Responses to “Skype open source. Not!”

  1. # Carlo Pianaon 02 Nov 2009 at 6:16 pm

    That’s also my understanding. The UI is totally irrelevant (and it is also quite badly designed, IMHO). The protocols are the real stuff (are they so innovative? I beg to doubt it, it’s just voice compression AFAICT).

    So what are they “giving away”? Nothing! They are just playing the open source buzzword without believing a single word of what Free Software means.

  2. # Carlo Piana (carlopiana) 's status on Monday, 02-Nov-09 17:17:01 UTC - Identi.caon 02 Nov 2009 at 6:17 pm

    [...] http://maffulli.net/2009/11/02/skype-open-source-not/ a few seconds ago from Gwibber [...]

  3. # Stefano Maffulli (smaffulli) 's status on Tuesday, 03-Nov-09 07:49:51 UTC - Identi.caon 03 Nov 2009 at 8:49 am

    [...] http://maffulli.net/2009/11/02/skype-open-source-not/ a few seconds ago from Gwibber [...]

  4. # albinon 04 Nov 2009 at 11:14 pm

    Why would we need a Gtalk server? We’ve already got ejabberd and several others!

  5. # Stefon 05 Nov 2009 at 9:42 am

    Do they all support voice? and how about xmpp clients that support voice? I still haven’t seen one that is reliable. And gtalk is already how old? 3 years?

  6. # Saqer A (saqeram) 's status on Thursday, 05-Nov-09 17:02:45 UTC - Identi.caon 05 Nov 2009 at 6:02 pm

    [...] http://maffulli.net/2009/11/02/skype-open-source-not/ a few seconds ago from web [...]