Skype To Take Action Against Reverse-Engineering

[stikonas]

I just received another email from them... Thanking me for posting this article and their response... I guess they don't realize Phoronix supports Linux and open-source...

This reminds me of http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=208 which is ironic now when Microsoft bought skype.

[nobodyofimportance]

Riiiight. They Care about user experience...

I considered actually PAYING for skype once as my main phone. You know what made me change my mind? The fact that their Linux client exposes ALL of your personal details - EVEN IF YOU SETUP YOUR PRIVACY!!

This disregard for protecting MY personal details from others I don't know, and having a "shell" of an interface that LOOKS good, but doesn't work is why I will NEVER use their service as long as they force me to use their utterly BROKEN client.

And I was actually thinking about subscribing to them when I found out about the reverse engineered client that WOULD respect my privacy.

If they're TRYING to lose potential customers, they are doing a damn fine job.

F**K them!!! They don't know how to treat subscribers - let alone get new ones!!!

[not.sure]

Have they heard of Sony??
That dude is setting up a major PR disaster (and, uhm, "network problems") for skype. Lots of fun for us to watch.
Popcorn anyone?

[FireBurn]

The djinn is out of the bottle. Information about protocol has already been distributed over the internet and torrents. How can they hide it now?

By changing it again

[FireBurn]

both the developer and the VP in this situation is wrong and an idiot.

the person who reverse engineered skype was taking a pretty big risk of getting caught. telling people he's made progress is even worse of an idea, especially if he didn't release source code. seriously, what was he thinking? did he honestly think that the skype people were just going to simply not do anything about this?

as for skype, contacting michael is not going to do ANYTHING about this problem - he (probably) doesn't personally know the developer and he isn't developing it himself. all it does is make them look like a bunch of douchebags when michael is just a reporter. as much as i like hearing that they're putting a lot of effort into the experience, michael is right in the fact that maybe if the skype linux client were better, people wouldn't feel a need to hack it. however...

i don't think the purpose of the reverse engineering was intended solely to make up for the lack of features that the windows version has. the linux client isn't nearly as updated but imo, it still has all the important features.

I'm pretty sure there is nothing illegal about reverse engineering a protocol otherwise the Samba project would be in a lot of trouble

[schmidtbag]

I'm pretty sure there is nothing illegal about reverse engineering a protocol otherwise the Samba project would be in a lot of trouble

i never said anything about it being illegal, its just MS is notorious for suing people who threaten their competition, no matter how much or how little they are likely to win and MS owns skype. as an example, just look at linspire - that was originally named "lindows" and ms sued them because of the friggin name. if the VP of skype truly believes what he/she said about this reverse engineering being a problem then this developer is in some serious crap right now, as he probably doesn't have the money to pay for a lawyer who can back him up.


fyi, MS actually never won against the lindows case, but the devs were basically told to change the name, probably because the court was tired of hearing MS bitch and moan. today, paying for linspire is to help cover their court costs.

[EarthMind]

It was to be expected that they were going to attack the developer. They didn't keep it closed so that one day one guy could hack his way through it. Something that's closed should remain closed against third-party access.

I understand why they would keep the protocol closed, namely it helps defending against the ever increasing amount of spam via IM software. So reverse-engineering the protocol and releasing the source code has both a positive ad negative side.

[Ex-Cyber]

both the developer and the VP in this situation is wrong and an idiot.

the person who reverse engineered skype was taking a pretty big risk of getting caught. telling people he's made progress is even worse of an idea, especially if he didn't release source code. seriously, what was he thinking? did he honestly think that the skype people were just going to simply not do anything about this?

People doing this kind of work often want to "get caught", in the sense that they want credit for opening a closed system. The developer most likely figured that Skype's hands are tied by the need to remain compatible with the various "Skype phones" and such in the field. Yes, they could apply stricter measures to a new version, but those measures would still be implemented in code that could be reverse-engineered. If they require constant updates to every Skype client (including embedded ones) to get on the network, I think they'll find that their customers don't consider that the "best possible experience".

[bug77]

I just received another email from them... Thanking me for posting this article and their response... I guess they don't realize Phoronix supports Linux and open-source...

I'm sure there are several other things they don't realize. But then again, they're not paid to.

[yotambien]

I wish people would wake up. This skype crap needs to die already. There are FAR superior OPEN alternatives to this piece of MS TRASH.

So what is it we people should wake up to? A world where we can't make video calls to our friends and family without horribly troubling ourselves in the process? Uhm...let them think about it...ah, yes, I did tried the alternatives: they didn't work. So no, thanks, there's only one of them lives and I do want to live it.

But I appreciate the sense of humour. Attention everybody, from now on, in linux circles, Skype is to be tagged as a piece of Microsoft trash...

Having said this, I would love the reverse engineering efforts to fully achieve their goals.

PS. And what is it about Skype's linux client? Am I the lucky one for whom it works or what?