On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Christopher Sawtell <csawt...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 20 July 2010 08:50, C. Falconer <cfalco...@totalteam.co.nz> wrote: >> No no no! Skype is evil and nasty and CLOSED. > > Apart from the fact that it is proprietary software, what is "evil and > nasty" about it? > ... > to spite my face. I have four proprietary packages on my Linux > machine, Skype, Java, Adobe flash and acroread, simply because it is > impossible to function in the connected world without them.
Java is (now) open sourced, and I haven't come across a need for PDF reading that Evince failed for, or for writing that OpenOffice.org failed for. I do have Adobe Flash, and Skype. I use Flash for entertainment (mostly flash games from Kongregate, and for youtube/vimeo/etc for video, HTML5 notwithstanding) and Skype because customers & family want it. Skype's big advantage is the size of the existing userbase, and the ease of use. If it was wonderfully easy to use but no-one else was on their network, there would be no point. I would expect that most people are using Skype because "it is free" (obviously there's data usage costs, but that's common to SIP too), because "it's easy to use", and "ooh, look, you can do video!". > works pretty well for me on a Telstra Cable connection. It's also > fully encrypted. Because it's proprietary closed source, you can't make that argument. The best you can say is that you can't figure out how the audio is represented in flight. It's possible that the data stream is properly encrypted, however there are numerous governments who have made comments that they are able to eavesdrop on Skype conversations -- it's unlikely that they are all inaccurate statements. > I tried running GnomeMeeting / Eikga a while ago, but it never worked > reliably. and required a proxy in the firewall. The firewall was, and Skype is a significantly better implementation of "just work within the network resources available" than most SIP solutions, because the ease of use of the software directly impacts on the revenues of the parent compay (i.e. if it works fine, some people will buy value-add services like Skype Out). This is not a common proposition for Open Source software, which is part of the main useability differences between the "closed" and "open" world (obviously, not all of the differences). BTW, I switched from a Linux edge firewall to pfSense a couple of weeks ago, and all my "tested as working just fine" SIP connections were dead the next day; I wasted a day trying to fix the situation, adding firewall rules, running proxies, everything. Eventually calmed down and realised that the problem was "just" a relatively short state table timeout on the firewall. Now I run multiple SIP devices talking to multiple servers with no special NAT considerations (especially, no STUN, proxy or incoming rules) and everything is fine. Skype of course worked perfectly the whole time, probably because Skype is using more of my network resources than SIP is, just to stay online. Luckily it seems as if that's such a small portion of my available network resource that it doesn't cause a problem. So, is Skype "evil and nasty"? It's evil philosophically because the communications protocol is closed, and to a lesser extent because the client implementation is closed. It's nasty because it is very greedy with your network resources compared to other solutions that provide the same user experience. However, is it too "evil and nasty" to use? For me, no. It's bad, but not bad enough to stop using it yet. If there were an Open Source alternative, that provided the same functionality with a similar-enough user experience, I would stop using it and promote the alternative. But SIP voice telephones are not the same. SIP video would be great, but it's not the protocol/implementations that are the problem here (see Linphone for example) but the need to choose a proxy or voip operator that is a step too far for "Aunt Tilly". Less choice is anathema for us, but necessary for them. -jim
