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Well, there's linphone. Will do video and SIP, but missing multiway calls.

http://www.linphone.org/
You also have XMPP clients that do VOIP as well as VideoChat.
Heck Gtalk, MS Messenger, Yahoo Chat and many others will handle most of what you can do with Skype except for calling a phone number which might just be a matter of time if Google doesn't to that already.
You know in many ways the phone number system in the was a great geocentric routing system. 1 == long distance, area code would get you to that general area and then the general area was broken down into exchanges roughly 10000 devices. When you think about the fact that at one time each call was a dedicated circuit between two phones the fact that it worked as well as it did was amazing. No wonder they gave us the transistor, Unix, and c. Also explains why they where slow to adopt packet switching.

http://www.linphone.org/

I absolutely point-blank refuse to use Skype for exactly that reason.

So, what's a good VoIP client for Android? I have a legacy Gizmo SIP account I use with my Linux desktop.

I'm aware of IMSdroid, SIPdroid, Linphone and Fring, but I haven't seen anyone do a good comparative review.

Earlier I used an ATA box and a SIP VoIP from Bredbandsbolaget (sweden, all of the rest aswell) and then I switched to Rix Telecom which I only use together with a softphone, I'm considering switching to Affinity Telecom since you don't pay anything per month and get a free ATA box if you sign up for 12 months (I haven't found the catch in that...)

Anyway, I call with software only and yes it works. For Windows and others gizmo project has a client which seems nice, but I think it only works with their servers. SJlabs SJphone is the client I thought where best in Windows and there is a Linux version aswell. Another client is Xten X-lite which I avoided since the GUI looked so weird (it tend to do on them all.)
Free as in speach clients for the UNIX world has been quite crappy in comparision, the best are probably linphone both kphone might work aswell.

Anyway yes it do works! In Linux with ALSA I would rate the sound quality ekiga / SJphone on first place, then linphone and last kphone. For the interface SJphone, ekiga, kphone, linphone. The bad thing with SJphone in Linux was that it didn't had any calling tones if you didn't set up a command yourself to run when you got incoming calls. But I didn't know if it would kill it aswell or repeat it or anything so I never did and therefor never knew if anyone called ;)

Ekiga is good.

VoIP not only needs to catch up but also be open like email, and unlike the divided IM space.
Unfortunately Skype is not the application which connects to an open network.

Only applications like Gizmo http://www.gizmoproject.com/ and many other ones (which I don't use) connect to the International Standard-compliant Protocol known as SIP.

If you want voice chat (VoIP) on Linux then you have a good selection too (I don't know which are SIP compliant and which are not though):

http://www.phonegaim.com/
http://cockatoo.mozdev.org/
http://www.gizmoproject.com/
http://www.linphone.org/
http://www.wirlab.net/kphone/
http://www.minisip.org/
http://www.sflphone.org/
http://www.sipfoundry.org/
http://www.twinklephone.com/
http://www.openwengo.com/
http://yate.null.ro/
http://www.divmod.org/projects/shtoom

In Europe, Siemens sells the Gigaset M34 USB adapter which lets you use a number of DECT handsets for VoIP. The adapter comes with a (customised) version of Skype. I have not tried this thing yet but I might give it a go, given that I've been using a DECT phone for several years now. Not with Skype though, as I'd rather use something standards-based (ie. a SIP phone like Linphone or the upcoming SIP-enabled version of GnomeMeeting).

How about xten, firefly, pulver, sjphone, sflphone, minisip, kphone, linphone, phonegaim? This is just the software I know of, there are probably many more that other people can add to the list. Which that would suit you depends of course on what your needs are.

I would have thought you'd be able to compile Kphone or Linphone on BSD perfectly happily.

I can't make any specific PPC / big endian recommendations, as I don't have a big endian machine. However, I've played with Linphone and it worked alright. Another one I've come across recently is minisip, which looks pretty good, although I haven't tried it.

For some others to look at, try this Freshmeat search - sip

linphone seems to work ok for this. Just forward the correct ports.

How does it lock its customers?

It locks them in by (a) creating a closed network, such that when using skype, you can only communicate with other skype VoIP users (note that I'm talking about only across the Internet, not using the PSTN gateway), and (b) if skype is successful enough, the costs of the skype user-base moving to another standard (open or not) becomes so high that it doesn't happen. The skype user-base are then locked in. Microsoft's MS Word monopoly for a classic example of what happens when users are locked into a proprietory format for their information.

For example, I don't use MS Word, and, theoretically, I can't apply for a number of jobs I see, because they want my resume in MS Word format. Luckly for me, OO.org have reverse engineered the MS Word format, so I can convert my resume. However, if Microsoft introduce any sort of copy protection / DRM / encryption into the MS Word format (and I think they are planning to), then reverse engineering of the MS Word format by the OO.org group would be illegal under the DMCA. If that happens, then either I can't apply for a job I may be a perfect candidate for, or if I want to apply, I then have to spend money on an OS I'd prefer not to run (I run Linux exclusively these days), and by a Word processor I don't really need (OO.org is fine for what I do). Of course I could go down to Kinkos or something, which would be a cheaper alternative. However, the cheapest alternative would be to use the software I already have, on a computer I already have. Yet I couldn't, because the people I'm sending my information to are locked into MS Word, and that forces me to try to adapt, increasing my costs. The only people who win out of a scheme like this is Microsoft.

Now, imagine if the people advertising jobs asked for resumes in open formats such as HTML or PDF format. I could choose tools that I like to generate them (I might like to use vi for HTML or postscript, and then convert the postscript to PDF), and other people can choose to use different tools that suit the way they work.

All the "standard" SIP soft phones that I have tried have been so complicated that I've decided to keep this unstandard little piece of software until something better emerges.

At least under Linux, I've found Linphone to be a very simple and easy to use soft implementation of a SIP phone.

GPL Violation? I don't think so - it looks more like they've just glued gaim and linphone together.

You can probably replace the missing files with stuff here.

for those who don't know what SIP is.

A number of years ago, the telecom providers got together and tried to do VoIP. They came up with H.323, which was a terrible mess and near impossible to do anything with. To top that off, you have to pay for access to the spec (I'm only pretty sure about this, please correct me if I'm wrong) So VoIP didn't go anywhere for a while.

Then the IP folks (the people who designed the internet protocols like IP, TCP, UDP, etc) came together and designed SIP. The entire protocol is described in a mere 150 page RFC. Anyone who's implemented a standardized protocol from a spec knows what a godsend a short spec is.

In short, SIP is a protocol designed by the Internet folks for the Internet. It's layered on RTP, so the audio quality degrades gracefully with the link quality. You can operate it point-to-point by simply running two clients on two machines and pointing one at the other's IP address. Or, if you want an easy to remember URL, you can sign up for a free account at places like fwd.pulver.net. You'll then be accessible as sip:username@fwd.pulver.net.

Google for "SIP softphones" and you'll find quit a few clients. The big ones on linux are kphone and linphone. Shtoom is making some headway also, and runs on linux, windows, and os x.

Skype decided they don't like either H.323 or SIP, went off and designed their own proprietary protocol, and is keeping it secret from everyone else.

I know nikotel works great on windows and macOS and as it is SIP compliant it works with linphone and kphone on linux.

Linphone offers SIP calling for Linux.

SIP is an IETF standard for voip, surely he just meant it could only phone other SIP phones! no need for any conspiracy theories! SIP is an open standard, and you can even get linux software linphone to use it... Just need a gateway to the traditional phone system and yer sorted.

Check out Linphone. It's been one of the first to adopt Speex.

The big players in VOIP, mainly Avaya, Nortell, Alcatel, Cisco, to name a few all started out with H.323 phones. Avaya (formerly the huge division of AT&T that did PBXs) is moving towards SIP. Though others are already there. It's probably not too important yet as most installations are still traditional analog and digital phones. That fact makes the small pure SIP players, like Pingtel have a huge disadvantage in market share/mind share. The next generation of Microsoft's RTC servers will be a SIP solution (this comes in addition to version 5.0 of Messenger). And hey, if you just want a SIP soft client on your desktop, why don't you surf over and grab linephone.

• Linphone (http://www.linphone.org/)
• SIPSet (http://www.vovida.org/)

And as several readers pointed out, if you're interested in VoIP on Linux, you should also check out the sites of both...

Might I also add (the albeit not particularly well named, IMHO) Linphone.

I regularly call Australia (a real phone) from Germany using linphone, with the help of a friend in Australia who is willing to let me use his SIP gateway to route local calls.

Reverse calls are supportable too, with people dialing a number there and reaching me on the computer, but I admit I haven't gotten around to arranging the SIP proxy at the Australian end.

Linphone's interface is a bit primitive, and I admit that I don't get the quality of sound that I expect should be possible, but then the software is still very much under development. It certainly is usable though!

Anyone know if gnomemeeting is planning to support SIP? With Cisco's big IP-telephony push based around SIP, I imagine it's only going to become more and more popular.

Cool project. In fact for voice only, Speex should be much more adapted. Last time I checked, I could get the same quality as Ogg with almost half the bit-rate (of course, the opposite is true for music). Also, I think the CPU requirements are lower. As for modem communication, it's quite feasible since you can get intelligible speech with as low as 6 kbps. If you're curious, you can try the CVS version of Linphone which integrates Speex at 8 kbps and 15 kbps.

Fast forward to 2002. Microsoft still kind of ships Netmeeting with Windows XP Home, but there are no shortcuts, their documentation discourages you from using it (it also blue-screened my XP machine when I tried running it). Instead, they want you to use Microsoft Messenger, which only seems to want to talk through Microsoft's servers. Yahoo! give you video conferencing, but only through Yahoo! messenger and only on Windows. CU-SeeMe doesn't seem to exist anymore. In fact, I couldn't find any Windows or OSX H.323 implementations.

Instead, now the next thing seems to be SIP (Session Initiation Protocol, which is curiously what Vovida is based on. Well, it's kind of like HTTP, and that's nice compared to H.323's ASN protocols. MSN Messenger seems to be using it. There is Linphone, which is SIP based and works on Linux.

But... how do we do cross platform video conferencing now? Microsoft Messenger may speak SIP, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't let me do machine to machine calls. Even if it did, GnomeMeeting doesn't seem to support SIP (yet?) and Linphone doesn't do video. And MacOSX, as far as I can tell, is almost completely out in the cold; at least, I couldn't find any commercial video conferencing software for it. The closest is the OpenH.323 sample applications, running under X11 on MacOSX. That's not exactly what you can ask average Mac users to use.

So, if I want to do cross-platform video conferencing between Linux, Windows, and/or Macintosh, what software and protocols should I use?