If you want to understand what Skype actually is, it might help to picture an almighty telephone and mail company. This company can not only spy on your private conversations and has total control over them, but it also forces you to use it. It owns the telephone lines and all mail transportation and does not let other companies use them.

Open the skype put your nick, password, give it sign up and go, you're logged into your Skype, you'll see your contacts and all that stuff, if you have balance you can use skype on your phone,

Skype is proprietary software that allows you to make calls over the Internet using your computer. Skype uses decentralized peer-to-peer technologies, so your calls do not go through a central server, but through distributed servers and other users. It uses its own proprietary communication protocol to achieve this.

Still, Linux users really want Skype, so every now and again, another story starts that Skype is going to go open-source. In the latest Skype open-source rumor, it's claimed that "We are happy to be able to inform you that Skype will from now on be part of the open source community."

This is the Skype API Plugin for Pidgin/libpurple/Adium. If you're already running Skype, you can have your Skype contacts displayed with your Pidgin/libpurple/Adium contacts. It is intended as a complete replacement for the Skype user interface, hopefully everything you can do in Skype you can do with this plugin.

Today I installed Skype in Ubuntu 7.04. There can be a number of problems running Skype in Ubuntu. Yet my biggest concern was getting my microphone working.

In response to inquiries regarding a German court's ruling that Skype had breached the GPL, the company told LinuxDevices.com today that it "has not acted improperly." The alleged violation was associated with the method by which Skype "distributed" GPL-licensed source code with a Linux-powered VoIP handset.

Skype's attitude to Linux desktop users is frankly disturbing. Take a look at the chart of software issues for the Skype client...

The other day I found that the latest Linux Skype client, version 2.0.0.72, does not include SMS functionality. Frustrated with Skype's treating Linux users like second-rate citizens, I resolved to see what alternatives there are to Skype. I started with Ekiga.