Skype going Open Source?

By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 04 November 2009, 19:17 IST   |    3 Comments
Printer Print Email Email
Bangalore: Skype has been widely used worldwide to make calls as well as chatting. Skype is mostly used on Windows and though there are many versions of Linux that are compatible with Skype, the latest version for Linux, 2.1-beta, lags far behind Windows. Linux users have been keenly waiting for Linux version of Skype. Many times there have been rumors that Skype is coming up with open source version, but these rumors have never been confirmed. Computer World blog writer Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols gave a call to Skype and this was their response. "We appreciate our user community's enthusiasm and realize this is something they have been wanting for a while. We realize the potential of the open-source community and believe that making Skype for Linux an open source application will help to speed up its development and enhance its compatibility with different versions of Linux. While it is our goal to make Skype for Linux source code available to the community in the near future, we are not at a point to disclose an exact release date yet." This confirms that Open Source version of Skype is on the way but it is not known when it will be launched. There are already many Linux VoIP open-source programs which are as good as Skye such as LinPhone, QuteCom. Most of these programs use the open SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) standard, so they can work with each other. There are also several open-source VoIP server programs, such as Asterisk and FreeSwitch if users want to run a business or group VoIP phone exchange.