On Mon, 2008-08-25 at 10:25 +1200, Jim Cheetham wrote: > Skype is written specifically to benefit the parent company; > specifically to cope with the case where the end-user doesn't know > what to do besides just press the green go button.
I don't see why easy of use has to be tied to a parent company. > SIP is written to be a carrier-grade messaging system, by people who > like to co-operate with networks and standards. And this is mutually incompatible with making an easy to use free product because...? > > I hate Skype for being non-free, but I have to use it because > > You don't *have* to use it. They can call a PSTN number just as easily > as they can call a Skype user -- it's the same green button. You don't > *have* to save *their* money. You're using Skype for *convenience*, > don't pretend otherwise. Quite right. I could instead use a different for-fee proprietary network such as Telecom or Vodafone. But this would cost me more for the same end effect and so is a dumb idea. > If you were to use an open protocol, you'd be able to benefit from > some of the innovation going on. How about, every time Fred calls you > the call time and duration get logged automatically into your trouble > ticketing or billing application? You can't do that with Skype > *unless* Skype themselves decide to add that feature. You can do it > today even with pure hardware SIP phones, because implementors of Open > Standards are allowed to innovate independantly. Yes, and if the SIP stuff had a wrapper that did the Skype-like autoconfig then a lot more ordinary people (as opposed to just us technical literati) would actually be able to use it. > > non-techies can't set up any of the Open alternatives. Why does it have > > to be like this? > > Ah, now the deeper question -- why isn't Free software easier to use? > Because most people that are motivated to produce code are not > motivated by "ease of use". Some are -- Gnome for example. But even > they are unable to respond quickly when something changes ... Er, not quite what I meant. What's the technical workings that makes Skype auto-configurable and how does one go about gluing it into a SIP auto-configuration wrapper? What needs to change? Who needs to be lent on? Vik :v)
