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The Skype outage: LWN FUD?The Skype outage: LWN FUD?Posted Aug 23, 2007 3:49 UTC (Thu) by bvdm (subscriber, #42755)Parent article: The Skype outage
The increasing amount of FUD originating from within the FLOSS community is a concern to me. This article contains two dubious points:
1. The borderline insinuation that Skype may have introduced wiretapping and used this outage as cover. What is the basis for suspecting this? Does it make sense for a company to suffer a huge PR hit if they could just have phased it in over time? No, it does not. This is Fear and Doubt.
2. Harping on Windows reboots while it is completely besides the point. The trigger was that Skype was restarted on all those machines, not that the machines rebooted. Red Hat pushing out an update to an open-source P2P client can just as easily lead to a problem like this. This is Uncertainty and Doubt.
The further we can down the FUD path, the more we will lose our *technical* credibility which is FLOSS's strongest selling point.
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The Skype outage: LWN FUD? Posted Aug 23, 2007 5:15 UTC (Thu) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link] For (2), it was a quote from Skype themselves saying that the reboots were triggered by a Windows Update being pushed out. I don't think you can count Skype as part of the FLOSS community.
The Skype outage: LWN FUD? Posted Aug 23, 2007 5:50 UTC (Thu) by bvdm (subscriber, #42755) [Link] You have missed my point. The article based a different argument on the reboot issue.
The Skype outage: LWN FUD? Posted Aug 23, 2007 6:57 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I think people in the "FLOSS community" (what a horrible name) have always spread FUD, even among themselves. It has been extensively used in KDE versus GNOME, Free Software vs Open Source, against Sendmail... And just remember how some outside targets have been derailed: Microsoft, Apple, Sun. Deserved or not.The only difference I gather might be that we are not a bunch of loony geeks anymore: people are actually listening now. And I agree that this new responsibility should not be taken lightly (to say it in a Stan-Lee-esque way).
The Skype outage: LWN FUD? Posted Aug 23, 2007 9:24 UTC (Thu) by pcampe (subscriber, #28223) [Link] >1. The borderline insinuation that Skype may have introduced wiretapping and>used this outage as cover. What is the basis for suspecting this?
Gimme the source code, and I stop saying that. In the meanwhile, I use skype only for personal use, no business could _secretely_ conducted over skype unless otherwise proven.
The Skype outage: LWN FUD? Posted Aug 23, 2007 9:41 UTC (Thu) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] So, what do you use instead ?
I mean this as an honest question.
You don't trust Skype, fine. But do you then instead trust your cellphone-manufacturer, the company running your cell-network, and all operators of other telephone-networks which your call passes trough instead ?
The Skype outage: LWN FUD? Posted Aug 23, 2007 11:56 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] SIP w/ zRTP / sRTP works quite fine. Only three-way conference possible with Twinkle client without server support, though. I think setting up an encrypted conference room on a SIP server is more complicated, but someone could know better.
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