Skype is going to be open-sourced!
I won’t dwell too long on this as you can check the full post on Slashdot via Olivier Faurax’s blog post.
Whilst asking about a Skype package for some alien sounding distro called “Mandriva” (must be a fork of the Hanna Montana distro or something*) he was told that the Skype client was due to become part of the open-source community.
Not quite believing what he’d read he asked for clarification on this and received: –
Yes, indeed, the Linux Skype version will become open source in the nearest future.
from “Joerg” @ Skype Customer Support.
Great news!
If this is true then it’s great news and the first sign of proper progress for Skype on Linux since before eBay bought it. (They’ve since sold it, hence the progress!)
Now this will only apply to the client side of things and not the underlying protocol, but it will give developers the chance to enhance, beautify and hell even give us a native GTK version!
* I’m joking about not knowing of Mandriva. I’m fully aware it’s great legacy as Madrake and it’s popular modern form as Mandriva. I’m just having a friendly rival-distro dig.
Update
Skype have issued an official statement: –
Just a quick update, since we seem to have hit slashdot with this news.
Yes, there’s an open source version of Linux client being developed. This will be a part of larger offering, but we can’t tell you much more about that right now. Having an open source UI will help us get adopted in the “multicultural” land of Linux distributions, as well as on other platforms and will speed up further development. We will update you once more details are available.