
Skype: "We've settled with Joltid"—now owns its core technology - Timothee
http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2009/11/joltid_settlement.html
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zandorg
Wow, those 2 Swedish chaps know how to bluff their way into a 14% stake...

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maximilian
They're incredible. They basically sold their company to eBay twice. First the
name and the servers and then again for the technology. Pretty awesome.

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staunch
I don't know the details, but it seems they took advantage of eBay's
ignorance. Screwing people over is not a good longterm strategy. I know I
wouldn't want anything to do with them.

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neilc
There's certainly been drama, but I don't think that eBay was ignorant of the
fact that they never purchased some of the core Skype/Joltid technology -- per
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/technology/companies/07sky...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/technology/companies/07skype.html?hpw)

"EBay did not purchase this part of the Skype technology in 2005 because the
Skype founders, and Joltid’s other shareholders, were asking for additional
hundreds of millions, and stated that they intended to use the technology for
other unrelated ventures, like their video startup Joost."

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zandorg
I tried using Joost. It was obviously using SDL, and had a kind of zooming
video interface. It was so impossible to figure out the user interface, that I
never got to see any videos!

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pierrefar
Key fact: 14% share for Skype founders "in exchange for providing Joltid
software and a significant capital investment". Would love to hear just how
"significant" this capital is :)

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cookiecaper
Cool, now they don't have an excuse to keep the protocol closed in the new
"open-source" version.

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riffic
doesn't matter anyways, closed protocols are a dead end technology. an open
solution will take its place and the network effect will see that to be the
eventual outcome.

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stanleydrew
It definitely matters in the short-term though.

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jacquesm
Someone ought to make a deal with mr. Walker and polish up speak-freely, add
video and create an open source competitor to skype.

<http://www.fourmilab.ch/netfone/windows/speak_freely.html>

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wmf
VoIP is easy; it's the 100% reliable NAT traversal, supernodes, DHT, and
polished UI that's hard. Unfortunately, this stuff is pretty "mucky" so few
open source people want to work on it.

Also, Speak Freely is pretty much the oldest VoIP code available; you'd be
better off starting with something like Telepathy/Empathy.

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braindead_in
Bad for the Gizmo guys. And open source version I guess too.

