

Shock threat to shut Skype - leriksen
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/shock-threat-to-shut-skype-20090731-e3qe.html

======
adamt
It does make you wonder about eBay's M&A team if they buy a company for $2.6Bn
but still have to license the key bit of technology from the people they
bought it from, AND with a license that the other side didn't have to renew.

Should at least make for an interesting lawsuit and a nice pay day for some
lawyers!

~~~
terpua
Maybe the Skype founders just asked (or demanded).
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=725848>

Or eBay did a IBM/MS/DOS redux.

------
yardie
How do you pay so much for a company and end up having to pay more for the
technology. I don't even know why they paid so much for skype in the first
place. Yes, the technology is cool, but not $2.6Bn cool. Even if they did have
to license the engine it should have been perpetual with a buyout option.
Then, again eBay must have been drunk off all the monies they are making
screwing over users with insane fees.

~~~
rimantas
Maybe already having millions of users does make technology a bit cooler?

------
riffic
good riddance, maybe their users will jump to Google Talk or other standards-
based services.

This should serve as a cautionary tale to any company who relies on licensing
proprietary technology in spite of emergent open standards.

~~~
madars
Google Talk is not standards-based at all. It is a proprietary extension to
XMMP.

Edit: I was wrong. Thanks, riffic! They have documented everything --
<http://code.google.com/apis/talk/talk_developers_home.html>

~~~
riffic
<http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0166.html>

------
jwilliams
eBay announced it is planning to IPO Skype next year. I guess this is somehow
related.

~~~
incomethax
Or it may have something to do with this:
[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/10/report-founders-want-
to...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/10/report-founders-want-to-buy-skype-
from-ebay/)

~~~
jwilliams
Interesting - that announcement was just immediately prior to the eBay Skype
IPO announcement (which was April 14 according to a quick Google..)

------
dctoedt
When eBay agreed to license (not buy) the key piece of technology, I wonder
why the license wasn't made irrevocable.

~~~
dctoedt
Irrevocability could have been conditioned on paying some stated sum (possibly
increasing over time) to the licensor.

