Will new Skype owners deal differently with open source?
Summary: What is the future of VOIP, and what part will open source play in it?
There is growing speculation, especially given its deal with Digium, that the new owners of Skype may take a different attitude toward open source.
That would be a good thing.
Skype has long been the most popular Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) client, but it is also closed. It was proprietary, not just in terms of its coding but in terms of eBay's attitude toward doing business.
Its proprietary nature gave Skype the marketing budget it needed to win in the marketplace. But it also hampered VOIP efforts to go beyond voice.
While VOIP gained popularity as a telephony replacement its importance goes well beyond that. Once voice is integrated as a normal Internet service, it can be combined with other services in any number of ways.
The difference between a VOIP program and a Web conferencing system is not that large. You can not only mimic all the common voice services using VOIP, but add more as you need them or imagine them.
This has not happened up to now, partly because much of our voice traffic has moved to cellular networks which digitize it as a matter of course and monitor their networks to gain the most revenue they can out of every bit. For cellular, VOIP is just a way of squeezing more calls into limited bandwidth.
So the question becomes, what can Skype offer, alongside the open source movement, that will make it part of a compelling suite of services rather than just a way to get around telco gatekeepers? How, if Skype is to become part of the open source movement, will we get the word out to the mass market?
Vonage has shown a way to reach the mass market with a service based on open source, but investors are turning away from it due to coming competition from Skype and Google. So can Google deliver an open source VOIP service worth advertising, and what might it add to one?
What is the future of VOIP, and what part will open source play in it?
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Talkback
Don?t forget Skype for SIP ;)
systems - there's more about how it works on our website:
http://www.skype.com/go/sip
Skype for SIP - Requires G.729?
Thanks for discussing this subject. I am a huge fan of HD VoIP because I use it all day every day. I hope others will come to appreciate high quality audio connections. No doubt the hundreds of millions of Skype users like it. :)
-MC
http://www.freeswitch.org
RE: Will new Skype owners deal differently with open source?
Personally, I doubt it.
"Blaming the customers"
When the customers get their accounts "hacked and money drained," is that because of a security flaw in Skype itself, or is it because some customer was stupid enough to fall for a phishing scam and gave someone their password?
If it's the former, then yes, Skype absolutely needs to take responsibility and fix their product. But if it's the latter, they're quite right to blame the customer, since it was the customer's fault, not Skype's.
Check the Skype User Forums
I was skeptical about this at first, as you are, but there have been just too many of them, and eventually it even happened to a couple of people whom I know and trust. (The good news is that it made it a lot easier for me to convince them to put Skype in the trash, where it belongs.)
As with any and all customer problems and complaints, Skype has either ignored these reports, never even acknowledging or responding to them, or they have simply said that the customer was at fault and needed to be "more careful". At least I agree with them on that last point, people should be a lot "more careful", and not give Skype any money under any circumstances.
jw
RE: Will new Skype owners deal differently with open source?
Please clarify
That would be the opposite of [i]tight[/i] market share, I presume?
How will they monetise Skype
While Google is always a threat, I sense that increasingly people are staying away from Google services because of privacy issues. I would rather see Yahoo provide a good competitor as they already have a large user base and that would be easier to convert.
SKYPE not secure?
And how many users are online at any one time across the world? 20 million, more? What percentage use stupid, easily remembered passwords? How hard is it to create a database of "Stupid, easily cracked" common passwords of 8 or less characters? .1% of SKYPE "password cracked" users online at any time would easily flood a users forum with complaints and make for BIG numbers!
Are these people "Stupid"? NO! In todays Net-world, passwords are the heart and soul of account and online access security. We are HUMAN, we're not good at remembering dozens of complicated long (25+ character)passwords, period.
I use a popular "....form type" password management application that has worked exceptionally well for me. My SKYPE password is at the maximum length allowed and mixed. All my online passwords are like this and none are the same. This password management "xxxxform" program has never been hacked, cracked or broken. I use a USB drive version for other PC or travel related access. In 5 years of use, I've never been breached and I have a heavy Internet footprint.
Today's Internet requires password management tools because of the password complexity required today. Those who don't will continue to fill user forums with hacked account complaints.