[Asterisk-Dev] A crazy idea... Skype channel in Asterisk

[Fernando Romo]

Benjamin:

I understand your position about Skype and agree with you in the fact of 
support AIX, but... i still think and i propose the idea of the skype 
channel, is take two actions about it:

1) Press the Skype people to Open the Protocol and make and effort to 
make the channel

2) Make a project wher we make a "Central IAX Directory" (Skype Like) 
where we deposit our "contact" channels and a kind of "signature" to try 
to make a "trusted" Phone comunity. This derivate two efforts:

     a) Make a Server side aplication for the directory and contacts (I 
can do it)

     b) And the most important.... Make a AIX Client for many plataforms 
the more user
          frienly can be and try to make the solution spread as much as 
we can.
          (here we need Win, Mac Programers... Linux is taked for granted)
 
I think the Asterisk effort can take much relevance (and publicity) with 
the skype interconectivity, if this company has 28 million users, is not 
a little number.

And i finishs with this question: We can compite vs Skype and win?

Maybe the Open Source side of this can help us, but if the IAX 
application can't take the preference in the users (and not Open source 
people) the chances are low. But maybe we are in the oportunity to make 
IAX and standard.

Your comments are welcome. I Think my little idea has derivate another 
big issues.

Best Regards....... Fernando Romo
                             pop at cofradia.org

Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists wrote:

>On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 10:40:52 +1300, Matt Riddell
><matt.riddell at sineapps.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Let us all know how your communications with the Skype Team go.  I'd
>>probably weight the conversation in the direction of "we want to allow
>>people to use skype at work from their telephone" - as if we are going
>>to send all of our outgoing calls via skypeout!  :-)  That'd probably
>>help sway them a little.  :-)
>>    
>>
>
>Matt, I think you are kidding yourself. The reason why Skype are doing
>what they are doing is precisely to establish a monopoly over all
>access into their service and not allow any alternatives.
>
>Anything short of Digium handing over all rights in Asterisk to Skype,
>they are not going to sway.
>
>Skype is another wannabe Microsoft in the making and we should be
>extremely careful. On the one hand, we have an overheated debate
>whether or not the BSD license is ethical enough for GPL developers to
>be considered tolerable, on the other we are getting excited about
>flirting with a company that is as monopolistic and by extension anti
>open source as Skype, second only to Microsoft.
>
>If Skype were to make a public statement that they are going to open
>up their protocol together with a clear time line attached, I am all
>for it.
>
>But anything falling short of that, I say, Skype deserves total
>boycott and an anti-Skype information campaign along the lines of
>groklaw that tells people why they should avoid it like the plague and
>why their business model is a poison pill for their customers. We
>don't need yet another telephone monopoly. We don't need yet another
>Microsoft.
>
>Instead of wasting our time giving Skype even more profilation, we
>better spend more time on lobbying manufacturers to support IAX and
>work on making IAX an IETF standard.
>
>Support IAX, not Skype for Skye is the darkness and IAX is the light.
>
>rgds
>benjk
>
>  
>