Microsoft Is Buying Out Skype

[matthewbpt]

Jingle is built on top of XMPP...

Are you sure of it? Last time Pidgin wasn't able to do video calls, it seems they added support but the protocol isn't really compatible with Google Talk.

Are you sure voice/video calls are possible with clients using the web-based or native client from Google?

Yes I am sure, I have done it millions of times, using pidgin, empathy, the web based plugin and the Nokia n900 telepathy based client. They all worked for voice and video.

[BlueJayofEvil]

QuteCom could be another alternative.

[mendieta]

what app combination have you tried??? (ie Gtalk to Pidgin or something else)?

Purely within a browser, in both ends. Two different gmail accounts. I can ping someone with a gmail account and invite for a conversation. As long as they installed the software, it runs into their software

Now, it seems really painful to ask them: "Hey, can we switch from Skype? You need to: first open a gmail account; second, install this software from this place; third, login into gmail from your browser; fourth: look me up in gmail, and invite me to a teleconf." Way to cumbersome.

[BlackStar]

--- Skype becomes more widely adopted when it becomes part of the MSN product family.

That's a given more or less. I was talking from the linux viewpoint.

Interestingly, Microsoft has promised to keep support for non-Windows platforms (which will help them maintain their vendor lock-in advantage).

[mendieta]

http://www.itworld.com/open-source/1...ct-linux-users

[pejakm]

Not FOSS, but still, it could replace Skype:

http://www.goober.com/

[devius]

Interestingly, Microsoft has promised to keep support for non-Windows platforms.

Non-Windows platforms from the MS point of view = Apple. Linux doesn't even exist.

[crazycheese]

I use ekiga with SIP. Opensource and standartized.

Skype is same crap as Kazaa and will die like ICQ. If ms buys it, it will die even earlier, so its a welcomed step. And they will cut all android or linux versions - don't worry. This is their regular "business" practice. If you can't make it work better on your ground, make it work worser on enemy ground. And such unrelated to innovation crap.

[allquixotic]

Non-Windows platforms from the MS point of view = Apple. Linux doesn't even exist.

Not true. Microsoft is a very diverse and large company these days; they don't really have any sense of a central opinion. It really depends upon who you ask.

The business is so large that even the hard-liners at HQ (Ballmer, Gates, and the good old boys) literally don't have time to scrutinize every last business unit to make sure that they aren't doing anything that might help people switch to Linux by shipping legal Microsoft software that is written for Linux.

For example, Microsoft Pathways bought a company that was releasing a Java-based implementation of a Team Foundation Server client. TFS is a not completely terrible, but very slow version control system written by Microsoft that replaces their entirely useless Visual SourceSafe. The VS2010 version of TFS, albeit very slow, does have many features rivaling the likes of Subversion and Perforce. Anyway, this company that MSFT bought was shipping a Pure Java client for TFS checkout/checkin/etc, which means naturally that it runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and any other platform where a Java 5 implementation exists. They even have an Eclipse plugin.

Now Microsoft continues to happily sell licenses to this software, and they haven't implemented anything that would make it less capable of running on non-Windows platforms. I grabbed it for free off of MSDNAA (legally) and tried it out on Fedora 15 with Eclipse and it works. It's called "Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere", where the "Everywhere" means "You can run it on Linux, Solaris, your AIX mainframe, or your 1987 kerosene-powered cheese grater".

They do have a history of continuing to at least ship Linux software that was developed by outside companies that they then bought. And then there's the MSFT in-house contributions to the Linux kernel for their Server 2008 hypervisor, Hyper-V.

I have my doubts that they'd ever kill the Linux client, but I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see any new official versions of it. It'd be absolutely sinister of them to prevent the Linux client from connecting to their network; I can't imagine they would go that far, even though we are talking about Microsoft.

[»John«]

And then there's the MSFT in-house contributions to the Linux kernel for their Server 2008 hypervisor, Hyper-V.

You mean that debacle when they had to modify the kernel because they failed to write a decent hypervisor (not my own words, but very true)? If I remember correctly (and it seems I do), it took them 200 shots just to get them in shape so that they could be at least merged in staging and subsequently dropped after 2 or 3 releases because nobody cared to finish the job.
To be fair, some Android stuff was dropped at the same time for pretty much the same reasons (maybe except for the poor coding).

No pun intended, just trying to put that M$ "contribution" into perspective.