OT: Re: [clue-tech] Katrina's technology: Skype or Gizmo Project?

[Greg Knaddison]

On 9/17/05, mike <mikeb at wispertel.net> wrote:
> Yes, this guy is on the right track.  When Ebay or any other company buys Open
> Source technology what happens to it? Does it die?  Or will grow and flourish?
> Who knows... only time will tell with Skype.... One question I have which
> license is Skype currently under? I read there  license agreement and it is
> strange  EULA.
> 

I believe that Skype is a British company and that the software is
"closed source".  Maybe the EULA is more standard in the UK.

Gizmo uses SIP (a standardized, open, protocol) but I believe that it
is "closed source" as well.

Google Talk similarly uses standardized technologies to do VOIP, but
it's "closed source" even though they seem to be doing plenty to move
IM to a standardized open platform that would allow Gizmo and Skype
and Google Talk users to all talk to each other (or msn-yahoo-aim &
Google Talk contacts to IM to each other).  Not that that will
necessarily happen any time, soon, but Google is trying to push them
all in that direction.

To your questin about whether open source projects do better or worse
when they are purchased/funded by a company...you can look at
SLES/Novell Firefox|nVu/(IBM|Google|Linspire|etc.) and see that it
seems to work well, but the jury is probably "still out" for a while
longer.

Greg
_______________________________________________
CLUE-tech mailing list
CLUE-tech at cluedenver.org
http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue-tech