A Call to Boycott Skype
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2012-08-05 15:43:51 UTC
- Modified: 2012-08-05 15:43:51 UTC
Summary: More sites call for a boycott of Microsoft Skype, especially after Microsoft's admission that Skype facilitates surveillance
THE controversy behind Skype has given us a lot of attention recently, including mentions from some rather famous people.
FSFE folks promote
this new list of 10 reasons to "boycott Skype" and the opening remarks go like this: "If you want to understand what Skype actually is, it might help to picture an almighty telephone and mail company. This company can not only spy on your private conversations and has total control over them, but it also forces you to use it. It owns the telephone lines and all mail transportation and does not let other companies use them. At the same time, you are bound to only use their telephone and mailboxes. Despite of these facts, more and more people are using Skype and even begin using the word “to skype” as a general term for talking and chatting over the internet.
"Hotmail as a brand is now dead.""Concentrating a lot of power in one single uncontrolled entity always leads to abuse of those powers, and Skype is not an exception. The following ten arguments should convince everybody to boycott Skype once and for all."
One sure thing is, Microsoft's ownership of Skype did the software no good. The same thing happened after Microsoft had bought Hotmail. Hotmail as a brand is now dead. ⬆
Comments
davidc
2012-08-05 23:14:43
1. I need an equivalent to SkypeOut as I often have to call mobile numbers in another country.
2. What service can provide a reliable high-quality service with clients available for Android, Apple Mac and iPhone, Linux desktop, Windows? Voice comms only works when I can get all my contacts, no matter what platform they use, to install or use the service. As one example, Viber offers some of those features, but sucks your complete contact list into its servers and therefore I rejected as inherently insecure.
Suggestions as to a Skype alternative for me?
Needs Sunlight
2012-08-06 18:28:34
Here's one example, but there are more:
http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Calling#Using_Ekiga_to_do_PC-to-phone_calls