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Licensing Dispute Threatens Future of Skype

Posted by timothy on from the it-puts-the-lotion-on-the-remote-kill-switch dept.

tomlins writes "eBay is faced with the prospect of having to close down the hugely popular VoIP app Skype due to its reliance on proprietary code still owned by Skype's original founders, who are threatening to pull the plug on the licensing agreement they have with eBay."

25 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Wait a minute... by ustolemyname · · Score: 5, Insightful

    eBay paid $2.6 Billion for a dinky little 8MB program, and don't even bother to make sure they got everything?

    Wow.

    1. Re:Wait a minute... by Shaiku · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've been wondering for a long time why eBay even bought skype. There is no relationship whatsoever and it doesn't come as a surprise to me that they're recently looking to dump it. They paid an outrageous sum, didn't get full rights, and failed to leverage that technology in any way useful to the company. Bizarre move..

    2. Re:Wait a minute... by sopssa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because large companies usually try to expand to new areas too. For example see Virgin Group and even Microsoft, who are doing hardware (and xbox) even if their core business is in Operating Systems.

      You dont always need a direct connection between a parent company and the one bought - They can continue to operate like they have, which is even more true when you're buying an existing company.

    3. Re:Wait a minute... by iYk6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There is no reason that a parent company and a bought company have be in related fields. However, it is common that they are. For example, eBay's auction and payment companies. Microsoft's OS and game consoles. Nintendo's game consoles and toys.

      The primary reason is that the parent companies assets, including human, are more aligned to fill the needs of the smaller company. eBay and Paypal was a perfect merge for Paypal, and now they effectively get twice the money per auction after forcing their eBay users to offer Paypal. When Microsoft started making Xboxes, they already had most of the operating system, which is a non-negligible part of a console, and more MS employees would be able to take apart and build a computer than say, the employees of a bank. Nintendo has a name which helps them sell toys.

      Sometimes, the smaller company can fill a need of a larger company. Perhaps an airline company will buy a computer retailer right before a major IT upgrade, and they will effectively have a discount.

      eBay and Skype fulfill none of the examples above and was truly a bizarre move.

    4. Re:Wait a minute... by linhares · · Score: 3, Insightful

      these dudes are claiming the title of world's greatest software assholes right from the hands of Gates, Ballmer & Co.

    5. Re:Wait a minute... by Shikaku · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On each login session, Skype generates a session key from 192 random bits. The session key is encrypted with the hard-coded login server's 1536-bit RSA key to form an encrypted session key. Skype also generates a 1024-bit private/public RSA key pair. An MD5 hash of a concatenation of the user name, constant string ("\nSkyper\n") and password is used as a shared secret with the login server. The plain session key is hashed into a 256-bit AES key that is used to encrypt the session's public RSA key and the shared secret. The encrypted session key and the AES encrypted value are sent to the login server.

      I would love if they broke all of those. Nevermind that the entire Skype protocol is decentralized already, which is a security risk already because you get random packets from random people using Skype.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_protocol

      Dumb AC troll.

    6. Re:Wait a minute... by sxpert · · Score: 3, Insightful

      which turns out to be security by obscurity.
      any security analyst can tell you how much this is bullshit ;)

    7. Re:Wait a minute... by FudRucker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      2.6 billion and did not get full ownership? wow what dumbasses runs eBay!!! i have an old stone bridge in NYC i can sell them too

      --
      Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    8. Re:Wait a minute... by mikiN · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, just start cranking away at those right now, and by the time they invent time travel you can either get forward in time to fetch the result (if the universe hasn't evaporated by then) or go back with your answer if you already have it.

      By the way, the above may be just one way of proving that time travel will not be possible. Anyone care to prove me wrong? :-)

      --
      The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
    9. Re:Wait a minute... by schon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Can you explain what part of this is "security by obscurity"?

      My guess would be the "closed source" part, thinking it's stopping people from finding bugs in the code.

      Hint: there's a difference between design and code. You quoted the design, and assumed that since the design is secure, that automatically translates to the code being secure too.

    10. Re:Wait a minute... by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's NOT that they didn't want to contact each other.

      eBay couldn't figure out, once they examined the potential fraud angle, how to keep the buyer and seller from colluding to terminate auctions, and conduct the sale privately - without eBay getting the fee.

      This was one of the many scenarios they already faced in text communications - and is highly monitored. Voice - especially SkyPe voice - was harder to track, capture and analyze for ToS violations and fraud. This problem remains unsolved.

      --
      "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
  2. Old bait-and-switch by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. Provide a good service, a tool, a format.
    2. Make it cheap.
    3. Wait 'til everyone uses it because it was cheap.
    4. Jack up the price.
    5. Profit.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. Ideal time to make it use open standards by worip · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Then chuck out the propriety code and make it work with open standards. Or if that does not exist, create an open standard and do the first reference implementation. I'm assuming e-bay has the right to distribute the executable under the Skype name.

    --
    A picture is worth exactly 1024 words.
  4. Re:Something is missing here by qbast · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would the founders of Skype be threatening to revoke the licensing agreement? What is their side?

    Isn't it obvious? "Gimme more money!"

    And why would eBay pay billions of dollars for something without some guarantee that they'd be able to run it for a while?

    Their lawyers allowed themselves to get suckered? There is lesson to all those FUDing about how using open sourced pieces of software makes company vulnerable to legal problems. Guess what? With closed source the problem is the same, only worse - you don't have several widely used and well understood licenses - every company creates its own and every time you sign one you risk your legal team missing some well-hidden minefield.

    This is like a super-sized version the story about the music industry claiming that it's ridiculous that people would think they could forever listen to their DRM music.

    On an individual level, people allow themselves to be screwed for a few dollars at a time, just to be able to listen to the music but - paying more than 2 billion for most of something without a contract ensuring that it's not a total waste of money? Wow.

    Wow indeed.

  5. Re:Just replace the code by MrCoke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Brave claim you make here since you haven't seen the code.

  6. Solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    They should open-source Skype and let the community work around the problem.

  7. a nelson moment by cas2000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Ha ha"

    proprietary code. what else would you expect?

  8. Re:Just replace the code by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Skype goes SIP?

    Ebay licences a personalised copy of Counterpath X-Lite or SJPhone?

    Ebay sells their rights to Skype - on ebay?

    Lawyers make a fortune sorting out this mess?

  9. Re:Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    On Linux, Skype is buggy as hell. It would be actually good if they go away and someone like Google step in with something functional. They need it anyway for their Chrome OS.

    Crap. Why does it always have to be Google? Google my ass! There are lots of other companies out there or even non-profit oriented projects (think Ekiga or OpenWengo, for instance) that could do the same or _at_least_ near the level of quality as Skype. Posts like these reflect the crack-smoking and stupid mentality of everyone here that Google is the infallible shiny savior of the world. You're forgetting that it is just another profit-driven company.

  10. Re:Dupe? Oh, no, different company... by gilgongo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Didn't we just have this a few years ago... oh no, that was SCO forgetting to actually buy UNIX from Novell. I wonder how many other companies will turn out not to own the software they think they own?

    Also, don't forget that RIM were nearly at the point of having to close down Blackberry wireless operations in the US a couple of years go for very similar reasons.

    --
    "And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
  11. i feel a reimplementation comming on by timmarhy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    these guys are shooting the goose that laid the golden egg. ebay will merely strip out the offending code and implement their own solution. maybe a little painful but i can assure you they aren't throwing up their arms and saying this isn't fixable, lets give up on that 2 billion bucks we spent...

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  12. Re:Ekiga by sakdoctor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I love linux. Love open standards. Love the unix philosophy of plugging software together.

    BUT, communication software is different because on the whole you don't get to choose.
    In an idea world, jabber, SIP OpenSSL, in reality you mum, gran, sister, girlfriend if you have one, and your pointy haired boss use MSN messenger and skype. No encryption out of the box is totally useless.
    Skype uses proprietary encryption, but that's better than none for non-businesses use.

    Seriously, fap away nerds because you know I'm right.

  13. skype founders must be scam artists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Imagine selling your company for an overpriced fee of 2.6 Billion, then a few years later delivering a deliberately fatal blow to the people who made you billionaires. These people have no conscience. They seem like greedy bastards. I think they should end up on the black list of everyone in the technology industry. There is obviously a bait and switch going on here.

  14. What? by C_Kode · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You pay $2.6 billion for a company and you leave the rug under you so it can be yanked out by the person you paid the $2.6 billion too effectively killing your business? What dumbass agreed to that?!?!

  15. Amusing by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I find this story slightly amusing, in a schadenfreude sort of way. I've always hated Skype for being a proprietary solution to things we already had standards-based solutions for, and getting hugely successful at it.

    To add insult to injury, getting half of the world locked in to a proprietary solution and killing off interoperability has made the Skype folks very, very rich.

    But now one of the entities that contributed towards these assholes getting rich got burnt by them, badly. Hah. I hope they've learned from this and that other people take notice.

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.