Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: What Happened?

Re:Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: Wh... by nextstep on Thursday June 07, 2018 @01:25PM (#17258021)

This article is silly: they answer their own question at the end but pretend like this is still some big mystery or Apple never actually intended to nor wants to open source FaceTime.

But without the VirnetX patents and the peer-to-peer architecture, this service requires significantly greater backend resources. I’m not sure how Apple could feasibly open this standard to third party clients now.

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Re:Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: Wh... by raldi on Thursday June 07, 2018 @01:31PM (#17258095)

> they answer their own question at the end

They do? Where?

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Re:Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: Wh... by JustSomeNobody on Thursday June 07, 2018 @01:34PM (#17258130)

> There's also an ongoing lawsuit to consider -- as Ars Technica documented in 2013, Apple was forced to majorly change how FaceTime works to avoid infringing on the patents of a company called VirnetX. Instead of letting phones communicate directly with each other, Apple added "relay servers" to help the phones connect.

> Presumably, someone would have to pay for those servers, and/or figure out a way for them to talk to Google or Microsoft or other third-party servers if FaceTime were going to be truly open.

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Re:Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: Wh... by dingaling on Thursday June 07, 2018 @01:53PM (#17258349)

VirnetX is a listed company. Apple could simply buy them out from under the Board's feet and throw them in the dumpster and not even notice the cost.

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Re:Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: Wh... by raldi on Thursday June 07, 2018 @02:41PM (#17258842)

Market cap: 202M

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Re:Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: Wh... by cpmouter on Thursday June 07, 2018 @04:04PM (#17259703)

Apple makes that in what? Ten minutes? ;-)

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Re:Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: Wh... by glenra on Friday June 08, 2018 @02:32AM (#17263092)

> Apple makes that in what? Ten minutes? ;-)

About a day and a half. (that's based on 2017's $48 billion net income)

So Apple almost certainly could afford to buy the company, but they'd need a business case for doing so, weighing that option against all the OTHER nice things they might want to spend $200 million on.

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Re:Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: Wh... by code_duck on Friday June 08, 2018 @07:37AM (#17264343)

Apple also has something like 250 billion in liquid assets.

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Re:Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: Wh... by raldi on Thursday June 07, 2018 @01:41PM (#17258205)

I don't see why the patents made an open standard impossible, or even relatively difficult.

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Re:Steve Jobs Promised Open Source FaceTime Back in 2010: Wh... by duskwuff on Thursday June 07, 2018 @02:11PM (#17258532)

The patents covered parts of the technology which Apple planned to make an open standard. This would have left the standard patent-encumbered, making it hazardous to implement.

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