It’s All Good Over At Skype
Over at Skype Journal the always interesting Evan Wolf has a very good post called, “The Skype’s Not Falling.” His assertions are simple, factual and sensible. The end is most definitely not near for the alternative telecom giant. They face some issues, but who doesn’t.
The fact that they are legal issues means that time is a factor. They have lots of time to work out the problems either technically or politically. They can code their way out of trouble. Some have pointed out that making the project open source could allow them to move faster, if that’s a concern. They could negotiate their way out of the mess. That’s just about dollars, and they have a stack of those.
Of course, there is some reason to be watching the big telcos closely. If I really wanted Skype gone buying Joltid just to direct that battle would narrow their scope of possible solutions.
Being the optimist and advocate for open systems I’d like to see this moment as a chance for Skype to embrace SIP in a more complete fashion. They could replace their current proprietary Joltid p2p underpinnings with p2p SIP. That would push that IETF project into turbo mode and very possibly leave the telecom world a better place in the end.
Skype is the single most common way that people discover the joy of wideband VoIP. Also the cheapest. That being the case I’d hate to see them simply fall.
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Thanks for sharing this.
I think Skype has a much bigger role to play which starts with that Asterisk gateway. I also think Skype is going to be acquired by someone that will do a lot more with it than eBay did.
Tim Panton points out that IAX and DUNDI could be the foundation of a solution for Skype.
http://babyis60.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/the-best-job-ever-build-skype-2-0-in-a-year/
Which begs the question, “Why don’t they just buy Digium as a means to get moving in that direction?”