On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Curt Howland <howl...@priss.com> wrote: > So Skype has been bought by Microsoft. > > I expect the Linux version of Skype to be abolished in short order. Oh > well, thus the fate of proprietary software. I'm sure St. Ignucious is > shaking his head with the inevitability of it all. > > This aught to re-ignite the effort to develop the alternatives. > > And if it doesn't, that will say more than any success could. >
iirc, microsoft has more investment in more linux products than anyone else. they also have (or had?) quite a large investment in apple to stop them from going under in early 2000. i don't know what they plan to do with skype. maybe roll it into netmeeting (does that still exist?) or msn messenger. i think the only thing sure here is that it'll be installed by default on all windows phones now - something i'm sure the carriers aren't going to like (but will probably take care of with their bandwidth caps). as far as igniting anything, i don't know that much needs it. most people i know that use voip use cisco, the rest use asterisk. now, don't get me wrong about asterisk, there's as much comercial in that product as there is free - t1 cards, compression hardware / software, front ends, etc. if we're talking straight consumer video meeting software, this hasn't really taken off yet. sure, most people have skype installed on their computers. but, when i want to call someone, i still pick up my phone and use a ten year old 2g network to talk to people. will this get big? i have no doubt - probably in less than five years. will open source software work with it? eventually. will open source lead the way in making it so that when i want to contact with someone, i am mainly using programs that i can read the source code to? that's highly doubtful. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/banlktikaowj6f-u-3yjapossss8_9y8...@mail.gmail.com
