Signal to Noise

As it turns out, the developer of Limewire doesn’t like Skype. Setting aside the obvious history of disenchantment between open-source developers displayed towards their proprietary rival Kazaa, in the early 2000’s, Adam makes one of the most eloquent arguments against Skype–one that stems from the way Skype has engineered solutions to networking problems. In Adam’s view, Skype’s somewhat secretive approach to NAT traversal and its closed call signaling standard will eventually undo Skype.  The only point I disagree with in Adam’s post is that he seems to think Skype’s signaling capabilities CAN’T be used for anything other than telephony and instant messaging payloads. Adam seems to assume that Skype doesn’t (and will never) support other media.  Anyway, it’s a great read, so go check it out.