German district court Munich has convicted Skype of violating the GPL. One of the VoIP telephones sold by Skype run Linux, but the GPL text was not handed out together with the phone, although the GPL requires that.

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.

A German court has ruled that Skype violated the GPLv2 selling a Linux-based phone without access to the source code...

I thought you might like to see the court's order regarding Microsoft, extending the US District Court for the District of Columbia's oversight. There are actually two documents, one released for the public, a kind of executive summary [PDF], and then a much longer (78 pages compared to 6) Memorandum and Order, which is available from the US District Court for the District of Columbia's website's daily list of orders. I have them both as text.

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,

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."

Novell has filed its brief in the appeal of SCO v. Novell. It's 87 pages, so I haven't read it yet myself. I'll swing back by after I read it. But the quick look at the index and the closing words indicates Novell is asking the court to affirm the lower court: "For all the above reasons, the district court judgment should be affirmed."

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.

Skype is a predatory virus that should be banned from your computer.
But don't take my word for it. Look at the facts. Skype can be and has been hacked.