Skype: "We've settled with Joltid"—now owns its core technology

http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2009/11/joltid_settlement.html

by Timothee • 17 years ago

39 20 17 years ago

share.skype.com

zandorg3• 17 years ago

Wow, those 2 Swedish chaps know how to bluff their way into a 14% stake...

maximilian• 17 years ago

They're incredible. They basically sold their company to eBay twice. First the name and the servers and then again for the technology. Pretty awesome.

staunch• 17 years ago

I don't know the details, but it seems they took advantage of eBay's ignorance. Screwing people over is not a good longterm strategy. I know I wouldn't want anything to do with them.

alexandros• 17 years ago

nitpick: Janus Friis is Danish

zandorg3• 17 years ago

Heh, I only had time to Wikipedia the first one! ;-)

pierrefar• 17 years ago

Key fact: 14% share for Skype founders "in exchange for providing Joltid software and a significant capital investment". Would love to hear just how "significant" this capital is :)

cookiecaper• 17 years ago

Cool, now they don't have an excuse to keep the protocol closed in the new "open-source" version.

riffic• 17 years ago

doesn't matter anyways, closed protocols are a dead end technology. an open solution will take its place and the network effect will see that to be the eventual outcome.

stanleydrew• 17 years ago

It definitely matters in the short-term though.

tomjen22• 17 years ago

Used to be so, but Skype is free enough so people use it and the network effect keeps people locked in to the Skype network.

braindead_in• 17 years ago

Bad for the Gizmo guys. And open source version I guess too.

jacquesm• 17 years ago

Someone ought to make a deal with mr. Walker and polish up speak-freely, add video and create an open source competitor to skype.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/netfone/windows/speak_freely.html

wmf• 17 years ago

VoIP is easy; it's the 100% reliable NAT traversal, supernodes, DHT, and polished UI that's hard. Unfortunately, this stuff is pretty "mucky" so few open source people want to work on it.

Also, Speak Freely is pretty much the oldest VoIP code available; you'd be better off starting with something like Telepathy/Empathy.

Skype: "We've settled with Joltid"—now owns its core technology

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