A Liberating Betrayal?

Having suspended disbelief for as long as I could, my ability to take Microsoft at their word over Skype was shattered yesterday on hearing the announcement by Digium, sponsors of the widely-used Asterisk VoIP project, that they have been told they can no longer sell their Asterisk-Skype interaction module after July 26. That means it will become impossible for this VoIP PBX to connect to Skype.

In one move, we have illustrated the risk of a hybrid open source model, the danger of dependency on a proprietary system, a proof that Microsoft still can't be trusted with open source and an impetus to open source innovation. All in one announcement.

Missing Freedoms

I've written before about Skype, explaining that my chief problem with it is the lack of software freedom and the consequent lack of business flexibility that causes. This news takes away the one crucial compromise that existed to soften that problem and clearly pits Microsoft-owned Skype against open standards and open source in a way that the previous owners implied but never made real. You never really had the freedom to leave; now it's been made clear.

The proprietary interests hold all the cards here. The community can't just "rehost and carry on" because the crucial add-on is proprietary. Even if wasn't, the protocol it's implementing is proprietary and subject to arbitrary change - very likely to happen if anyone attempts to reverse-engineer the interface and protocol. Asterisk may be open source, but if you're dependent on this interface to connect with your customers on Skype you've no freedoms - that's the way "open core" works.