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Microsoft Is Buying Out Skype

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  • #41
    I rather like the Reuters article. Investors do not like.

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    • #42
      Sounds like a flat out failure already. No more skype for me, since i dont like microsoft too much at all

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      • #43
        IMO Skype was nasty before and it won't become better with MS. Quastionable security/privacy, the whole protocol obfuscated, the Linux version always behind... I doubt anyting will improve here. The idea of a softphone / videochat is surely nice but I avoided Skype in the past for the obvious reasons and will do so in the future. Slowly free alternatives are emerging. I guess the biggest problem is the high "market share" among uninformed users. They see Skype just as a handy tool and are ignorant about the downsides. (But then these people also use MS/Apple software anyway )
        Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

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        • #44
          XMPP

          I can confirm that xmpp protocol works, especially using ICE (interactive connectivity establishment), I'm using empathy and nokia n900 every day, audio and video works on XMPP networks (jabber.org, gajim.org and my own local servers) without needing to configure anything (no opening ports, no touching routers, no setting up STUN), and on gtalk also works with gtalk in-browser client, in any combination.
          I really see no point in using skype.

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          • #45
            In the immortal words of Richard Milhaus Nixon, it is time for Google to "shit or get off the pot". Google has been internally using VoIP client internally for ages -- at least since acquiring Gismo5. It's well past time for them to deploy clients for all platforms -- or open up Voice and Talk for others to develop clients. Yes, I know you can chat with libpurple/XMPP clients and use Voice in a browser but that is a far cry from Skype functionality.


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            • #46
              To clear things up:

              Lots of GTalk/XMPP/etc confusion so here goes:

              When you sign up for Gmail/Google, that includes a XMPP/"Jabber" account, so you can use any XMPP client (Pidgin, Empathy, etc) to chat over it.

              You don't have to get a Google account to get XMPP/Jabber of course, there are lots of other servers to go to, like Jabber.org.

              If you or a friend has, for example, a Jabber.org XMPP account, you can chat with friends on other XMPP accounts/servers, including Google's.

              Different XMPP servers offer different features. Google's XMPP servers have the Jingle extension features, allowing you to do voice and video chats.

              I have confirmed that you can do voice and video chats from Google to Google accounts. I am not sure however about other servers. Part of the problem is finding out of a XMPP server supports the full Jingle protocols or at least has the voice and video protocols. Since Google supports voice and video, if you find a non-Google XMPP server that supports those, voice and video chat should work between them, or there's a big problem and it needs to be looked into.

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              • #47
                Oh, and as for making or accepting traditional "land line" calls, which cost money, I use http://www.sipgate.com/.

                The drawback is that I need to have a SIP client. What I want to find is a land line gateway provider for XMPP, i.e. instead of them translating land line <> SIP on their end, translate land line <> XMPP. I don't know if Asterisk has this feature yet though, nor do I know of any service provider offering this yet. I hope XMPP replaces SIP though since XMPP has so many more features.

                P.S. I love Google for rolling email into it as well, so you just need one address, and from that any user anywhere in the world can email, text, send files, and do voice and video chats with you. That's the way it should be, and even better, you shouldn't need Google or any external service provider to do it for you, which is what the social networking app devs are working on to some degree, like with https://joindiaspora.com/

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                • #48
                  Originally posted by timofonic View Post
                  There's also this...
                  http://jitsi.org
                  Thanks for that! Looks like it has potential, and says video and voice are fully supported with XMPP (as well as SIP), so I'm going to try to compare it against both Pidgin's and Empathy's video/voice capabilities/features.

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                  • #49
                    Jingle vs. XMPP

                    Originally posted by Yfrwlf View Post
                    Different XMPP servers offer different features. Google's XMPP servers have the Jingle extension features, allowing you to do voice and video chats.

                    I have confirmed that you can do voice and video chats from Google to Google accounts. I am not sure however about other servers. Part of the problem is finding out of a XMPP server supports the full Jingle protocols or at least has the voice and video protocols. Since Google supports voice and video, if you find a non-Google XMPP server that supports those, voice and video chat should work between them, or there's a big problem and it needs to be looked into.
                    Jingle is a peer-to-peer extension to the XMPP, so the server feature set should be completely irrelevant and everything should simply be a matter of what the clients can do. That is assuming that I grok this correctly.

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                    • #50
                      Originally posted by ?John? View Post
                      Jingle is a peer-to-peer extension to the XMPP, so the server feature set should be completely irrelevant and everything should simply be a matter of what the clients can do. That is assuming that I grok this correctly.
                      I remember seeing some place a XMPP server feature list for various XMPP servers, and so I think the server has to be aware of certain kinds of things at the very least. Sure, video and voice calls are negotiated and occur directly between the two clients, the connections being established via ICE apparently, but the XMPP server still apparently aids in those connections being established is my guess anyway, and may even be what informs the users if the other's client is capable of video or voice calls. Of course, the XMPP server needs to be capable of dealing with IMs especially when it needs to store off-line messages for instance. Ultimately it would be great for clients to communicate directly with each other without the need for any centralised server unless needed/wanted, but I doubt Google would throw money into something that removes service-based companies such as themselves completely from the picture.

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