http://ostatic.com/blog/bye-bye-skype-top-3-free-replacements
Skype has always been proprietary so those that prefer to use only Open
Source have relied upon free alternatives. Now with Microsoft's purchase
of Skype, Linux users are already predicting the end for them and are
looking for alternatives as well. It turns out that the Free Software
Foundation has had "Free software replacement for Skype" on their
High-Priority
<http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/#skypereplacement> List
for a while.
The FSF suggests that folks use one of the free programs available for
Linux and help development by sending in bug reports. They cite China's
spying on Skype conversations as a good reason. Does anyone doubt
Microsoft is capable of similar? So, even if Microsoft doesn't give
Linux (and Mac) users the kibosh, I wouldn't trust them and proprietary
software with my phone calls.
Quite an extensive list <http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/> of
alternatives is already compiled at the FSF, some of which I'd never
heard of before. But several bring a familiar ring - if you'll pardon
the pun.
1. Linphone <http://www.linphone.org> - Linphone is an internet phone or
VoIP much like Skype. It seems the page at the FSF needs a bit of
updating, because Linphone 3.4.0 was released in February 2011. The news
page states that "the main point of this new release is support for
multiple simultaneous calls, with pause, resume and transfer
functionality." It is released under the GNU GPL v2 license and
commercial support is available as well. It comes in binaries for
Debian-based distros or build from source. Here's a screenshot from the
Linphone Website:
2. Ekiga <http://www.ekiga.org/> - Ekiga was formerly known as
GnomeMeeting, which many have heard of. GnomeMeeting used to come with
lots of distributions and Ekiga is still seen in several. So, check your
distribution's repos. It provides "SoftPhone, Video Conferencing and
Instant Messenger application[s] over the Internet" and supports SIP and
H.323. Ekiga is released under the GPL and comes in binaries for lots of
distros and in source code. Again, scarfed screenshot from Ekiga Website:
3. Empathy <http://live.gnome.org/Empathy> - "Empathy is a messaging
program which supports text, voice, and video chat and file transfers
over many different protocols." This one is probably most well known
because of its inclusion in Ubuntu. 3.1 was released May 9. It is
released under the GPL and comes in binaries for Ubuntu. Looks like
others will have to build it from source. Again, shamelessly stolen
screenshot:
----
friends who have used these or have opinions, any suggestions on which
of these would be best for us to use...
regards
guru
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