Will it succeed?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| r_a_trip Mar 21, 2011 8:18 AM EDT |
It is an interesting project with a potential to make a huge social change, but... it is many years late, it has to fight well established incumbents, it has to be braindead easy and it needs to have outstanding marketing. In theory this could work, but I'm not holding my breath. When Eazel introduced their Nautilus file manager and lots of promises to revolutionize the FOSS desktop, the doom of MS and Apple was foretold. Eazel folded, Nautilus matured to something fairly usable in Gnome, MS is still chugging along and Apple is doing better than ever. When Google adopted the Jabber protocol for GTalk, it was seen as the golden opportunity to get people off of the horrid MSN messenger service. There was quite some buzz in the FOSS circles over getting Jabber on the stage. What happened instead was ordinairy people said meh and kept using MSN. Why bother switching people over to a new service when the majority of your contacts is on MSN and "it just works"? Who cares that some weird FOSS heads can't connect to you from time to time with their weird programs? If they want it to "just work" they can simply use Windows. Then KDE 4.0 was launched during the turmoil of Vista and this was to be "The Year of the Linux Desktop". Last I saw, MS regrouped with Windows 7. Apple grew bigger and Linux is still the "Geek Desktop". A year ago the heavens opened and Diaspora was going to take on Facebook. I took a mental note and promised myself to wait and see. I'm still waiting and not seeing. I actively took the stance that I wouldn't do anything with Diaspora until someone/anyone in my circles asked me to get an account. Nobody has done that so far. I bet if I ask a friend about Diaspora, I'll get a blank stare, even though it has been featured on the most popular for free Dutch newssite http://www.nu.nl. (Before anyone says that I should promote Diaspora, instead of waiting... No thanks, I've been the obnoxious preaching geek long enough in the past.) Now we get a new challenger to Skype. Lots of technical ideas and what it will do and what it won't do. I just know one thing. If it isn't going to be far easier than Skype and have more end-user desired features (including easy videochat), it won't make a dent. I need to be able to wow a friend with some nifty features and be able to point him/her to one download site. If (s)he can't go to that site and download just one package for either Windows, OS X, Linux or BSD, install it easily and have it "just work", it isn't going to happen. Freedom, privacy and self-empowerment simply aren't selling points. If they were, Facebook wouldn't be the dominant "social" network site. One even has to wonder if a Skype competitor isn't too little, too late. With Facebook and Twitter, the world seems to have opted for closed source, privacy invading, unilateral communication, where feedback is largely optional. These days the realtime aspect of communication seems to have gone the way of the DoDo. |
| JaseP Mar 21, 2011 9:12 AM EDT |
Google still has a chance to unseat Skype, since Skype uses nonstandard VOIP protocols (vs. SIP) & hijacks bandwidth from it's users. But for the most part, most things are dependent on who came in first with a usable service. While I agree that open source is not a main selling point (for most people), "Free" is. Most people, outside of those who have been burned by having data hijacked, or idealists, or researchers, could care less about "freedom," vs. "free stuff." But, I see that changing as home media servers, SlingBox, Roku, cheap mass storage, portable mass storage, etc. collide with MPAA/RIAA/Hollywood plans to re-sell us our movies/music in new formats & form factors, especially when they add little or nothing to the consumer's viewing/listening experience. The groundswell of public opinion will be, "I've paid once, why am I being forced to pay again!?!?" Open Source is more compatible with self-determination. People will slowly come around to seeing that. |
| r_a_trip Mar 21, 2011 11:15 AM EDT |
While I agree that open source is not a main selling point (for most people), "Free" is. I mostly agree with your p.o.v. as a whole, but in this particular case, being just "for free" absolutely doesn't cut it. Skype is "for free". Skype works more or less en people looking for IP Telephony know that Skype has a vast userbase. It is current and easy to install on Windows. That the Linux client is rotting somewhere on the left side of the Dark Ages doesn't matter to average people. What is the point of an yet another incompatible IP Telephony stack, if it means that Skype is still the best guess to be able to communicate? Who will be the userbase of GNU Call? The minority bunch of FOSS developers? More power to them, but if that is the case, GNU Call will have no significant impact. People can only use communication media, if they have other people they personally know to communicate with. This is possible today with various tools like IM clients and Skype, but it is all compartimentalized. There is no dead easy, universal standard that can deliver this. If GNU Call succeeds in combining telephony, text chat, video chat and whiteboarding in one easy to use (monolithic) application, that is easy to get and dead easy to install, with the absolute minimum of configuration (Apple style), then I could see them make a difference. If it stays a piece of infrastructure glue with a gazillion dependencies on external packages and an arcane way of configuring to get the thing up and running, it will be yet another paper GNU replacement for a proprietary package. If a Windows user has to download GNU Call and then (for example) successively download GTK+ and VLC and Ekiga and then manually configure it to get it to function, it will never go any further than idealist circles. Download one package (one for every major platform), install, give a username and password and then contact anyone on GNU Call in the world. If that comes to pass, then it might be called a resounding success. By the way, can anyone tell that I'm a grumpy FOSS user ;) |
| JaseP Mar 21, 2011 12:23 PM EDT |
The biggest users of VOIP are businesses in the form of SIP-based VOIP phone systems. Skype is incompatible with that. That gives GNUcall a chance. I predict it won't be long before you see home telephony systems that are like (or more like) the commercial offerings. Skype only has user base & ease of use on their side. |
| jdixon Mar 21, 2011 1:08 PM EDT |
> Skype only has user base & ease of use on their side. Can't you say pretty much the same thing about Windows? |
| JaseP Mar 21, 2011 1:40 PM EDT |
Quoting: Can't you say pretty much the same thing about Windows? No,... M$ has monopolistic activities, predatory practices, large corporate ad revenues to game for favorable press, threat of lawsuits, gaming the political process, back-room deals, etc., etc. Skype isn't that big & dirty yet. |
| jdixon Mar 21, 2011 2:36 PM EDT |
> No,... M$ has... Valid points. Point taken. |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 21, 2011 5:41 PM EDT |
> Skype isn't that big & dirty yet. Yet. And that is where Competition comes in. |
| JaseP Mar 23, 2011 10:31 AM EDT |
Google's bigger than Skype, and according to some, already dirty. Google's offering's are SIP compliant, I think. So, there's lotsa players already. So, I think "the game's afoot." |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 23, 2011 11:45 AM EDT |
When the SIP front-end exists that does everything Skype does, ... I don't mind paying Skype's cost for "extras", I've used them and I consider them fair for the money, I only object to their software being closed. |
| Steven_Rosenber Mar 23, 2011 1:49 PM EDT |
I wish Google Voice had decent audio and could be easily recorded. When I tried to do a recording, I had to initiate the call from a cell phone, and the audio was so choppy that it was unintelligible. |
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