Re:25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG w...
by lmm on Thursday November 21, 2013 @06:08AM
(#6774067)
> Yes, it's not encrypted at all.
Right, but at least you can tell. No-one knows whether the encryption Skype claims to be applying actually works. And you can integrate an encryption system into a phone if you want to, whereas if you try and do that with skype they'll change the client so that your thing doesn't work any more.
> The specs for the phone terminal are not open-source, so you can only do that with some hacking.
Speak for yourself. There are open source phones available if you want them. There are no open-source skype clients.
> Irrelevant for a physical phone.
Sure. But I don't have to use a physical phone. I can run a virtual phone on my freebsd box, whereas I can't run skype.
> The main difference between the skype client and a phone, is that a phone follows an open protocol, and therefore you can build your own. This is the only reason I can think of why using a phone is 'free' while using skype is not.
That's not a small difference; I'd say it's the most important difference.
Right, but at least you can tell. No-one knows whether the encryption Skype claims to be applying actually works. And you can integrate an encryption system into a phone if you want to, whereas if you try and do that with skype they'll change the client so that your thing doesn't work any more.
> The specs for the phone terminal are not open-source, so you can only do that with some hacking.
Speak for yourself. There are open source phones available if you want them. There are no open-source skype clients.
> Irrelevant for a physical phone.
Sure. But I don't have to use a physical phone. I can run a virtual phone on my freebsd box, whereas I can't run skype.
> The main difference between the skype client and a phone, is that a phone follows an open protocol, and therefore you can build your own. This is the only reason I can think of why using a phone is 'free' while using skype is not.
That's not a small difference; I'd say it's the most important difference.