[cookiecaper]

Maybe this will cause Skype to take Linux and Mac more seriously. If you've used the Windows version, you know almost all development has occurred there, whereas the Mac and Linux clients have looked the same for the last four or five years. The Linux client did have a major version bump about a year ago iirc, and that brought some needed features, but it was mostly the same.

Also, hopefully this will teach Skype to do more with open-source. I really hope they open the client up. This bug may have been caught, and things would definitely have turned out differently if Skype ran freely on other platforms. Maybe someone could even factor out a "Skype server" instead of an exclusive policy of client supernodes. Even serious torrenters rent a server somewhere to host their torrents -- P2P doesn't have to be strictly consumer-level connection, and really shouldn't be.

[anon114]

Or, maybe this will cause users to take Jabber/XMPP more seriously and stop using proprietary technology for corporate IM.

I've worked at places where management is completely gaga over Skype and would push me to support it despite the fact that I had no ability to block spam, troubleshoot messaging problems or integrate our IM system into existing Asterisk, SSO, monitoring and collaboration solutions.

IMHO, Openfire is far more flexible, extensible, secure, reliable and most importantly - manageable as a service.

http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/

disclaimer: I do not work for Ignite and have no vested interest in their business.

[cookiecaper]

When an XMPP solution that's as easy to use as Skype comes out I'll be all for this. As it stands, even Google's video chat is much more difficult for end-users to install and use.

I used to use Ekiga for video chat and it was much shoddier than Skype, constantly dropping calls, refusing to release the audio or video device so that we couldn't call back, and other serious bugs. Skype "just works".

I really hope that someone comes up with a decent free software competitor, but it doesn't really exist at this point. The fastest way to solve this problem would be for Skype to become free software.

[michaelbuckbee]

Agreed, I've always thought that Skype would one day roll out an enterprise type "Skype Server" that would explicitly make performance better within corporations.

[eps]

Why would they want to fragment the largest botnet in history? :)

[dflock]

They've already said that they're going to open source the client (http://blogs.skype.com/linux/2009/11/skype_open_source.html)... they just haven't actually done anything about it yet.

They'd better get a move on though, otherwise someone else (http://www.enrupt.com/index.php) is going to do it for them: http://www.enrupt.com/index.php/2010/07/07/skype-biggest-sec...

The trouble is that Skype is so closed and has been seemingly uninterested in open source and Linux, it's hard to find open source dev's who are interested in developing Skype related stuff.

[cookiecaper]

Their opening of the client is more of an opening of the interface -- all of the real work will still be performed by a proprietary blob that the open interface interacts with. I don't think that will be very useful. I'd prefer if they released something that was _really_ open-source.

[pyre]

It would be more useful then the current state of affairs. With a proprietary blob to talk to, it would be possible for people to do things like write text-based clients in curses, or the suggested 'server' version of Skype specifically for running as a super node or relay node.

[cookiecaper]

We don't know how flexible the blob they give us will be. Since the current interface has no provision for toggling or dealing with one's status on the P2P network, there's no reason to believe that that will necessarily be a feature that the blob exports; Skype may still keep the network communications totally opaque, all handled behind the black magic of the blob, which would simply export the basics like contact list, etc.

[pyre]

Not necessarily. We already know that things like supernodes are selected based on network conditions. The 'server' interface could just be a reduction of dependencies so that you could run it as a daemon process on a server. The Skype Network would then select it as a super node so long as the server had the right conditions (no NAT, no firewall, fat pipe, etc)

It presumably would still need a Skype login, but that could also be used to control it. Accepting commands from a white-list of Skype Ids.