Open-Source Skype Effort Is Dormant Or Dead

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Open-Source Skype Effort Is Dormant Or Dead

In June of last year Phoronix delivered the news that the Skype protocol was reverse-engineered and that there was already a working open-source code example for interfacing with Skype to send messages. While it seemed promising at first for potentially resulting in an open-source Skype client, the Microsoft-owned Skype vowed to take action. In the end they did go after the open-source / reverse-engineering work and now it looks like the project is dead, or at least terminally dormant...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA2ODI

[Credomane]

I don't remember the github repository itself ever having anything in it. Everything was uploaded as a download to the repository so it is located in a different section. Just with the repository being empty the downloads section is "hidden".

Just go the repository and add /downloads to the end of the url.

[Praetor]

I have to ask, was an attempt made to contact the devs behind this project prior to publishing the blog post?

[VeganProvolone]

i'd say that the closed source skype on linux is dead as well...

[Kano]

I would not say so, skype works on linux (it still needs ld preload for some kind of webcams) and the last small update was only 2 month ago (january 8th). compared to win you do dont get ads, some features may be missing however, but basically it is a good multiplatform. the real joke is only skype on win phone 7 which can not run in the background because wp7 misses that feature

[89c51]

i'd say that the closed source skype on linux is dead as well...

the problem is that we don't have something FOSS and cross platform with the same market share (or something that can potentially take over)

xmpp hasn't caught up sadly

[Ragas]

I would not say so, skype works on linux (it still needs ld preload for some kind of webcams) and the last small update was only 2 month ago (january 8th). compared to win you do dont get ads, some features may be missing however, but basically it is a good multiplatform. the real joke is only skype on win phone 7 which can not run in the background because wp7 misses that feature

... according to skype ... the last update was mid 2011 ... but oh well.

http://blogs.skype.com/garage/linux/

[-Cas-]

the problem is that we don't have something FOSS and cross platform with the same market share (or something that can potentially take over)

xmpp hasn't caught up sadly

Google chat video works fine for me cross-platform and its based on xmpp and jingle.

[Candide]

I do know that there is a version of Skype for Android. I don't know if it's open-source or not, nor do I know if it was really developed for Android (perhaps it's just the Linux version). I don't have an Android phone myself, but a friend of mine does and he says that Skype works well on it.

[89c51]

Google chat video works fine for me cross-platform and its based on xmpp and jingle.

yes i know but most people are familiar with skype. at some point there were some compatibility issues (you couldn't video chat from one client to the google official) which i don't know if they have been solved but anyway.

my comment had to do mostly with the popularity of the thing