Skype: "We've settled with Joltid"—now owns its core technology | Hacker News Reader

Skype: "We've settled with Joltid"—now owns its core technology

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39 pointsTimothee20 comments

Wow, those 2 Swedish chaps know how to bluff their way into a 14% stake...

They're incredible. They basically sold their company to eBay twice. First the name and the servers and then again for the technology. Pretty awesome.

I don't know the details, but it seems they took advantage of eBay's ignorance. Screwing people over is not a good longterm strategy. I know I wouldn't want anything to do with them.

There's certainly been drama, but I don't think that eBay was ignorant of the fact that they never purchased some of the core Skype/Joltid technology -- per http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/technology/companies/07sky...

"EBay did not purchase this part of the Skype technology in 2005 because the Skype founders, and Joltid’s other shareholders, were asking for additional hundreds of millions, and stated that they intended to use the technology for other unrelated ventures, like their video startup Joost."

I tried using Joost. It was obviously using SDL, and had a kind of zooming video interface. It was so impossible to figure out the user interface, that I never got to see any videos!

it seems they took advantage of eBay's ignorance. Screwing people over is not a good longterm strategy

When one does a $2.6 billion deal, there is no ignorance regarding what is being sold. There are teams of lawyers on both sides of the table checking and re-checking every detail.

You'd think that, but the whole Novell/SCO affair proved that companies can pay $150m for something with neither side fully understanding what was sold.

Alternatively, SCO knew precisely what it had purchased (the language is pretty clear).

Likewise with Ebay.

It's not a good long-term strategy but in some cases, you don't need it long-term. They're most probably set for life. (or until they invest in newspapers)

You are right, but they made enough that they don't have to depend on others will to work with them again - selling your soul is a surprisingly popular option when the price gets that high.

nitpick: Janus Friis is Danish

Heh, I only had time to Wikipedia the first one! ;-)

Key fact: 14% share for Skype founders "in exchange for providing Joltid software and a significant capital investment". Would love to hear just how "significant" this capital is :)

Cool, now they don't have an excuse to keep the protocol closed in the new "open-source" version.

doesn't matter anyways, closed protocols are a dead end technology. an open solution will take its place and the network effect will see that to be the eventual outcome.

It definitely matters in the short-term though.

Used to be so, but Skype is free enough so people use it and the network effect keeps people locked in to the Skype network.

Someone ought to make a deal with mr. Walker and polish up speak-freely, add video and create an open source competitor to skype.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/netfone/windows/speak_freely.html

VoIP is easy; it's the 100% reliable NAT traversal, supernodes, DHT, and polished UI that's hard. Unfortunately, this stuff is pretty "mucky" so few open source people want to work on it.

Also, Speak Freely is pretty much the oldest VoIP code available; you'd be better off starting with something like Telepathy/Empathy.

Bad for the Gizmo guys. And open source version I guess too.

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