Re: [Evolution] using skype

[Nick Jenkins <nickpj gmail com>]

> > 4) Can I call other skype users from Ekiga
>
> No, as I've said before, Skype prevents that.

... And that's the real issue for end-users. If you like free software,
BUT most of your friends or customers don't care and are using Skype,
then most people just install skype and chat to them using non-free
software. Changing yourself or the software you use is easy; changing
other people is hard to impossible. It's not about prefering locked-in
and proprietary over free and open; for 99% of people it's about being
able to zero-cost/cheaply talk/chat with the people that matter to you;
as such the biggest constraint is not what you want to use, but rather
what software the people you want to communicate with are already using.
So ruling out initiating skype calls from Evo due to philosophical
reasons seems somewhat user-antagonistic. I doubt it'll prevent even a
single person from using Skype, all it achieves is mildly annoyance of
Evolution users. Hardly some big philosophical win for free software;
it's much more akin to hitting yourself in the head with a hammer to
prove how stubborn you are.

Of course, for people who have a choice, VoIP is cheaper, more widely
available, works better on mobile phones than Skype (at least for me),
and has a competition from a wide variety of providers (e.g. there's a
very good list of VoIP providers here for every country, with ratings:
http://www.voxalot.com/action/globalProviderList ).

-- All the best,
Nick.