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Fring Calls Skype 'Cowards'; Skype Responds
An anonymous reader writes "It seems that Skype and Fring are not getting along so well today. First, Fring made a claim that Skype was blocking Fring and in a subsequent blog post, called Skype 'cowards': 'Now that Fring expanded capacity to support the huge demand for video calling for all users, Skype has blocked us from doing so. They are afraid of open mobile communication. Cowards.' Skype has responded, stating that Fring's misuse of Skype software was damaging their brand and reputation: 'There is no truth to Fring's claims that Skype has blocked it. Fring made the decision to remove Skype functionality on its own.'
Well I tend to believe Skype on this one. About the not-blocking. I can even see why they want to protect their brand and especially continued service for their customers. As a Skype user I actually am happy they do so. Nah, no complaints about skype from me so far. Calling your the company whoms api's you have been using for years a coward is not done in my book btw. Just keep to the license and everything should be fine. Al least, that is my experience with Skype. Your mileage may vary though.
+1 for Skype here. Just think about the cost of the servers (datacenter) doing the "video transcoding" between Skype and the mobile formats and see why it would be too expensive for a company like fring (with no revenue) to keep supporting Skype's video call. I think they must have realised that they would run out of money, and thus shut down Skype support, and tried to blame Skype for it.
I have no idea what Fring is, but I'll just read the summary which will surely define it.... no, well then, there must at least be a link to it.....no, of course not. I don't know what I was thinking.
"They deserved the block, and we didn't block them anyway" sounds like an odd denial.
Mind you, I think Fring is going about it wrongly and nobody who seriously wants an open standard and a sensible platform should even glance at Skype. Work with XMPP or the Wave protocol or something.
Basically, sounds like the vanilla Skype client is not ready to adopt this technology on their iPhone apps, but Fring already has, using Skype's API. This makes Skype's devs look bad...
It would also make the API look bad if this over-extends it (i.e. using it "in a way it wasn’t designed to be used" as Skype claims), resulting in reduced reliability. Skype is trying to build a reputation for being as reliable as the fixed telephone networks which, whatever else you might say about them, are pretty damn reliable. Something that usually works, but sometimes gets turned off without notice (like Skype claims happened last Friday) is not going to compete with the predictable (if boring and audio-only) plain-old-telephone-service.
If it wasn't for this article, I wouldn't have a clue who this Fring mob are. If anything, I think they're trying to break Skype brand by spreading these stories about how the big guy is hurting the little dudes...
Let that be a lesson to all, that those who base their business model around a third party are doomed to fail... In Fring's business plan, I'm sure one of the single points of failure is the fact that at any time, Skype can choose to put them out of business by adding one or two lines of iptables filter rules to their firewall.
They should do what skype does, not attempt to piggy-back on skype. It doesn't work, because eventually your business will actually grow, and then what happens is skype becomes your competitor, rather than your friend. Once this happens, it becomes in their best interest to remove you from the equation.
It is clear from the few posts on Fring's website that what they mean when they say Skype has blocked them is not that they implemented a technical measure to stop Fring from connecting but that they (likely through a C&D or something) threatened Fring that they would take legal action if they did not remove the functionality. So it is pretty clear that Skype did in fact block Fring, just through the legal system rather than by denying connectivity directly.