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

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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