Facebook Wants To Buy Skype

An anonymous reader writes "Remember when we learned that Facebook had resumed talks with Skype? Well, it turns out that Facebook is considering buying Skype outright. 'Skype is reportedly talking to Facebook about some sort of deal. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been involved in internal discussions about buying Skype, while Facebook also reached out to the Luxembourg-based company about forming a joint venture.'"

Re:So where's the FLOSS/open codec Skype alternati

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype was huge way before their android and apple apps. Just sayin...

Re:So where's the FLOSS/open codec Skype alternati

[Greyfox]

Making a data call really isn't Harry Potter magic shit. It's a lot easier when POTS isn't involved, although involving POTS is still entirely possible. There are a few OSS PBX systems, notably Asterisk and OpenPBX, that you can slap on a server on the Internet and use to handle incoming data calls and a ton of other things as well. There are a number of Linux soft phones that will work either with one of these PBX systems or standalone for computer-to-computer calling across the Internet. The only real difference is the commercial software puts a shiny face on it and builds out the infrastructure required to make it convenient to use.

If you slap an Asterisk box on a static IP on the open internet, and then link your POTS phone number to your asterisk box through a directory service like E164.org, the 4 other guys who do that with asterisk can dial your phone number and their asterisk servers will realize that you're doing that too and call you over a data connection instead of through the traditional phone system. I'm pretty sure Asterisk can also initiate video conferencing sessions.

Re:So where's the FLOSS/open codec Skype alternati

[pmontra]

All the software pieces exist as OSS projects but it's not only the software that made Skype big. It's been the company behind it that signed contracts that let me connect with standard phone networks all around the world. I can call POTS numbers from within Skype, I can get a virtual phone number so phones can call my Skype client. I can redirect my Skype account to a phone number or vice versa, with voice mail. That's something that a software project cannot do: you have to be a company and start competing with Skype.

Re:So where's the FLOSS/open codec Skype alternati

[somersault]

List of Open Source VOIP Software [voip-info.org]. Feel free to verify or modify the source to your liking. I think Ekiga [ekiga.org] sounds like a nice starting point, though I don't know how secure it is. It even supports calls to normal phones, so it seems I was wrong about that being a massive barrier.

Personally I don't care about trustworthiness or security in voice/video chat, since I've only ever used it for chatting to friends. For business use then being assured of confidentiality is more important of course.

Re:So where's the FLOSS/open codec Skype alternati

[Weezul]

There were also hoards of VoIP companies offering those services for under half the price charged by Skype, although some bundled the in-dial and out-dial. In fact, there are only a very few marketing heavy VoIP providers like Vonage charging more than Skype. The real issues are :

(1) Skype's user experience obliterates every other VoIP provider : Download & run Skype, make account, done. No tweak this setting if you use symmetric NAT. No please pay us first. etc.

(2) Skype has NAT traversal that afaik equals or beats any other VoIP software & provider combo. In fact, they use almost exactly the same NAT traversal tricks, but they may ask other clients to provide TURN (relay) when STUN fails, and maybe their STUN servers are better too. TURN gets expensive if the calls are all free.

(3) Skpye simplifies finding people you know who use Skype. And they've always encouraged people to talk to strangers, making it more likely that your friends already use Skype.

(4) Skype's encryption gives small businesses greater confidence.

If you wish to compete with Skype, you must (a) match them on PTSN price while offering awesome STUN and TURN, (b) match or beat them at friend finding, (c) beat them on encryption, i.e. use an open source client, preferably Zfone, and (d) offer "something more".

I think the logical "something more" might be encrypted friend-to-friend file sharing, perhaps with discussion threads ala facebook's photos. All IM clients offer file transfers, but no popular ones offer file sharing.