Skype to Go Semi-Open-Sourced for Linux

As a long-time user of Linux, and full-time going on three-and-a-half years, I’ve been able to test out a variety of applications, with a core few that I use each and every day. Out of them all, though, few are closed-source, with the exceptions of VMware Workstation, Nero Linux and Skype (which I still don’t use often due to various issues). Skype is one of those applications, that while closed-source, works extremely well, and simply can’t be ignored, given the absolute lack of like applications for the OS.

One major problem with Skype under Linux is Skype’s lack of interest. For what it’s worth, judging my the Mac OS X screenshots on Skype’s site, I can say it looks like the company doesn’t focus on non-Windows platforms much at all, in terms of updates. The problem I have with Skype for Linux is primarily a technical issue with how it utilizes the sound system. I used to own a USB mic which I used for this very application, but for some reason, it simply stopped working due to what I believe was a sound configuration change on my machine. Because of how Skype coded its application, there wasn’t an easy fix, and no workarounds worked for me. So, I haven’t used Skype since.

But, with a new statement made by the company, it looks like whatever issues Linux and possibly Mac OS X users have about Skype now, the community might soon be able to fix. Yes, that’s right… Skype is going open-source in Linux. There’s of course a caveat, and that’s that the protocol itself is still locked down, so if there are issues with that for some people, there’s not going to be tweaks made. It also means that the protocol will not be able to be used in another application, such as Pidgin, Kopete or other ‘nix IM clients.

What this does essentially mean is that if the community should want to bother, a split project could be designed to allow a fully-revamped UI, to mimic more of the recent Windows clients, and perhaps add features only found in that version as well. The protocol is there, after all… it’s just the features themselves that Skype have never implemented. While I do think Skype should have shown more love to its alt-OS versions, this could very well work out for the better.

“We appreciate our user community’s enthusiasm and realize this is something they have been wanting for a while. We realize the potential of the open source community and believe that making Skype for Linux an open source application will help to speed up its development and enhance its compatibility with different versions of Linux. While it is our goal to make Skype for Linux source code available to the community in the nearest future, we are not at a point to disclose an exact release date yet.”