14 ms·

I don't understand how software can get this much worse. Having done absolutely nothing would have left Skype in a better shape than what we have now. What did

I don't understand how software can get this much worse. Having done absolutely nothing would have left Skype in a better shape than what we have now. What did they do with it? Do they not regression test? Are they letting each new intern add a new feature while nobody really cares about quality? Did they just replace the old software with a new bug-riddled software that's getting pushed out the door without quality checks? Is it some manager trying to earn a medal by using that new MS-framework to rebuild everything and needing to push it out fast to declare success and move up while leaving the ruins behind?

kuschku 8y ago
They switched from P2P to a hosted model because suddenly CGNATs showed up everywhere on the internet with no way through them.
- std_throwaway 8y ago
  Wouldn't a central proxy service as fallback be enough then?
  - hedora 8y ago
    They used to do this. Now, WebRTC supports it in a standardized way, which has created a long list of competing services. :-)
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Skype was excellent at traversing all kinds of firewalls, in fact that made them the market leader.
  - wetpaws 8y ago
    This. You could spend days setting up port forwarding and tunneling for some game, but you could always be sure Skype will find some loophole and just work out of the box.
    - kwindla 8y ago
      And UDP hole-punching has actually gotten much easier. It's baked into the collection of specs that make up WebRTC now, for example. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5389 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5389 Mobile networks often don't allow UDP hole punching, and for users behind corporate firewalls, NAT is impossible. But the standards support for "try p2p, then fall back to lightweight relaying of media, then fall back to tunneling inside HTTPS" are really good, now. So I don't really buy that Microsoft switched to centralized media relaying because of changes in deployed network architecture. Possibly the goal is to eventually unify how Skype for Business and "consumer" Skype work. If you are selling a communications tool to enterprise customers, it does make sense to move away from p2p, because enterprise networks are generally locked down in ways that might make the decision to just skip even trying to support p2p defensible. Or maybe it's the lure of building features you can only do on media servers (compositing, various kinds of content analysis including inserting Cortana hooks into every call, etc). Or maybe the speculations about government pressure are correct.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  There's widespread speculation that they moved away from P2P because it made it harder for the NSA to wiretap, which the NSA gained the ability to do right before the acquisition[0]. Keep in mind I did say speculation, but the NSA definitely seems to have gained increase ease at wiretapping Skype in early 2011 which is also when Microsoft was negotiating/purchasing Skype. From [0]: > "Sustained Skype collection began in Feb 2011," reads a National Security Agency (NSA) training document Which is within two months of when Microsoft publicly announced acquisition. [0] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-s-war-on-internet-security-a-1010361.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-s...
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    Direct connections for audio or video calls are a patented ‘invention’ that is why the major vendors like Microsoft and also Apple changed to server based communication.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      Good grief. Direct connect audio calls were invented over a century ago. It was called the "telephone" Switched calls were invented decades ago. How can a patent still be valid?
      - dmurray 8y ago
        "X, but on a computer" was a popular way of getting new patents which generally worked in the US until the Alice Corp Supreme Court decision of 2014. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Inte...
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      There were a number of patent trolls that tried to milk this but if I could resist them then certainly so could the likes of Microsoft. This is definitely not the reason for the switch. See also: https://jacquesmattheij.com/my-brush-with-a-patent-troll https://jacquesmattheij.com/my-brush-with-a-patent-troll
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  Nope cgnat can be defeated too, also ipv6.
- akvadrako 8y ago
  Is that really true? My understanding is most CGNs are full-cone, and keep the same external IP+port for the same source IP+port combo for the duration of the mapping. Thus, you can use a STUN server to establish a direct connection. Certainly my ISP works in this manner, but I can't find much data about industry trends.
  - kwindla 8y ago
    This is our experience running a WebRTC-based service that tries hard to do peer-to-peer when possible. It's usually possible, except for people behind enterprise (big company) firewalls. But there is a big exception -- mobile networks. Mobile data networks don't allow udp hold punching. You have to relay the media.
pbhjpbhj 8y ago
Based on recent Linux updates (but not the most recent, it's become unusable for contacting family) I think they let each new intern remove a feature.
- std_throwaway 8y ago
  I don't consider removing superfluous features a bad thing as long as the core features are working flawlessly. EDIT: Apparently they removed really useful features which is a bad development.
  - singularity2001 8y ago
    They removed the superfluous "detect/connect microphone" feature. Update: Wow so many upvotes, someone should create a webrtc startup.
    - kwindla 8y ago
      :-) ... We're a WebRTC startup - https://daily.co https://daily.co - completely free WebRTC calls in Chrome, up to 50 participants in a call, free dial-in numbers in 25+ countries. Meeting recording coming later this month. Edge and Safari support soon.
      - singularity2001 8y ago
        "Sign in with Google" sorry you lost me right there. Also tried 'Just click' but no demo opened.
  - _ZeD_ 8y ago
    your superfluous is my essential. one thing is to start small, the other one to remove for the sake of removing
  - Strom 8y ago
    The Windows 10 version removed microphone volume control. You would think that this is a core feature for Skype, but apparently not. To make matters even worse, Skype now not only automatically chooses the microphone volume but also changes the global Windows mic volume. Which means that I have to reconfigure the mic volume after every call I make with Skype, because otherwise the volume is all messed up in every other app. It really boggles my mind.
erikb 8y ago
Always when you hear the word "Enterprise" and it's not related to Star Trek it usually means "company that has made it so far and so stable up on the food chain that from now on they don't need to work hard anymore". If you have never worked in Enterprise software development, think about putting 100 first semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them act "professional". What do you think happens if you hand over a relatively well developed software to such a team? Now let a few years pass and you have today's Skype.
- noonespecial 8y ago
  >putting 100 first semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them act "professional". That had to be the most succinct description of the corporate work environment I've ever encountered. I'm shamelessly stealing that. Well said.
  - erikb 8y ago
    no problem, CC-BY-SA.
    - Exuma 8y ago
      Did you just license your phrase?
      - erikb 8y ago
        You can also buy an enterprise license. Just contact our very competent sales team for a quote and NDA.
        noonespecial 8y ago
        ...they will be wearing costumes, be on drugs, and be dedicated to "professionalism". You will not able to get a quote without a meeting in person to discuss "features and options" of the product in order to "synergize with your existing ERP marketplace strategy".
Spooky23 8y ago
They just stopped paying attention to Skype and renamed Lync/Office Communications Server/Live Communications Server to “Skype for Business”. They are distinct things that suck in their own unique ways for their own unique reasons. Lync was a garbage product, and renaming it didn’t magically fix it. Almost a decade into its inclusion in Office 365, it still doesn’t integrate with AD the same way as the rest of Office. The whole product saddles the customer with a bizarre application architecture that pushes complexity on the customer. (Pop a beer and check out the networking requirements sometime! https://support.office.com/en-us/article/office-365-urls-and-ip-address-ranges-8548a211-3fe7-47cb-abb1-355ea5aa88a2?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#bkmk_lyo https://support.office.com/en-us/article/office-365-urls-and... ) Both Microsoft and Google fubar this function because these text/voice/meeting products really exist because the vendors see them as a lever to control their enterprise customers. Offering a function, coherent communications platform is a secondary or teritary consideration.
israrkhan 8y ago
This happened because they migrated skype from a peer to peer software to centralized servers. While this has enabled certain innovations, like web-based skype and better integeration with other devices, it negatively impacted overall quality of skype.
- cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
  It also got the US Intelligence Community off they are back as it gives them a single point of interception.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Why can you not have a peer-to-peer Skype that works on the web?
  - monocasa 8y ago
    WebRTC didn't exist at the time.
- dmitriid 8y ago
  You can't have peer-to-peer and expect it to work on mobile phones.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Why not? The signaling layer DHT probably shouldn't be on the phone clients, but everything else should be fine.
    - dmitriid 8y ago
      Because data plans and batteries run out too quickly. And the quality of the networks is really bad compared to non-mobile networks
      - monocasa 8y ago
DenisM 8y ago
>Having done absolutely nothing would have left Skype in a better shape You don't get a promotion for doing nothing. Doing something, on the other hand, might just work.
winrid 8y ago
I know people that work on the Skype team. They don't write unit tests for example, "because we sell code not tests". So maybe that gives a clue.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  Man, if ever there was an example that justified requiring professional accreditation for commercial programmers...
LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522 https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522 Cooperate customers (and secret service) demanded it- but it turned out to be a quality of call death spiral.
Gustomaximus 8y ago
For the usability/design side, I've seen this happen when you have designers/product manager attached full time to a product that aren't needed. The product is fine but now they have to justify their role ongoing so keep making updates that are simply not needed. Or a new designer is hired and they cant agree the last guy did a great job and do a couple of small tweaks. Because you cant justify a role for a year on that. They have to 'improve it'.

kuschku 8y ago

They switched from P2P to a hosted model because suddenly CGNATs showed up everywhere on the internet with no way through them.

std_throwaway 8y ago
Wouldn't a central proxy service as fallback be enough then?
- hedora 8y ago
  They used to do this. Now, WebRTC supports it in a standardized way, which has created a long list of competing services. :-)
jacquesm 8y ago
Skype was excellent at traversing all kinds of firewalls, in fact that made them the market leader.
- wetpaws 8y ago
  This. You could spend days setting up port forwarding and tunneling for some game, but you could always be sure Skype will find some loophole and just work out of the box.
  - kwindla 8y ago
    And UDP hole-punching has actually gotten much easier. It's baked into the collection of specs that make up WebRTC now, for example. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5389 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5389 Mobile networks often don't allow UDP hole punching, and for users behind corporate firewalls, NAT is impossible. But the standards support for "try p2p, then fall back to lightweight relaying of media, then fall back to tunneling inside HTTPS" are really good, now. So I don't really buy that Microsoft switched to centralized media relaying because of changes in deployed network architecture. Possibly the goal is to eventually unify how Skype for Business and "consumer" Skype work. If you are selling a communications tool to enterprise customers, it does make sense to move away from p2p, because enterprise networks are generally locked down in ways that might make the decision to just skip even trying to support p2p defensible. Or maybe it's the lure of building features you can only do on media servers (compositing, various kinds of content analysis including inserting Cortana hooks into every call, etc). Or maybe the speculations about government pressure are correct.
Someone1234 8y ago
There's widespread speculation that they moved away from P2P because it made it harder for the NSA to wiretap, which the NSA gained the ability to do right before the acquisition[0]. Keep in mind I did say speculation, but the NSA definitely seems to have gained increase ease at wiretapping Skype in early 2011 which is also when Microsoft was negotiating/purchasing Skype. From [0]: > "Sustained Skype collection began in Feb 2011," reads a National Security Agency (NSA) training document Which is within two months of when Microsoft publicly announced acquisition. [0] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-s-war-on-internet-security-a-1010361.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-s...
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  Direct connections for audio or video calls are a patented ‘invention’ that is why the major vendors like Microsoft and also Apple changed to server based communication.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Good grief. Direct connect audio calls were invented over a century ago. It was called the "telephone" Switched calls were invented decades ago. How can a patent still be valid?
    - dmurray 8y ago
      "X, but on a computer" was a popular way of getting new patents which generally worked in the US until the Alice Corp Supreme Court decision of 2014. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Inte...
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    There were a number of patent trolls that tried to milk this but if I could resist them then certainly so could the likes of Microsoft. This is definitely not the reason for the switch. See also: https://jacquesmattheij.com/my-brush-with-a-patent-troll https://jacquesmattheij.com/my-brush-with-a-patent-troll
iforgotpassword 8y ago
Nope cgnat can be defeated too, also ipv6.
akvadrako 8y ago
Is that really true? My understanding is most CGNs are full-cone, and keep the same external IP+port for the same source IP+port combo for the duration of the mapping. Thus, you can use a STUN server to establish a direct connection. Certainly my ISP works in this manner, but I can't find much data about industry trends.
- kwindla 8y ago
  This is our experience running a WebRTC-based service that tries hard to do peer-to-peer when possible. It's usually possible, except for people behind enterprise (big company) firewalls. But there is a big exception -- mobile networks. Mobile data networks don't allow udp hold punching. You have to relay the media.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago

Based on recent Linux updates (but not the most recent, it's become unusable for contacting family) I think they let each new intern remove a feature.

std_throwaway 8y ago
I don't consider removing superfluous features a bad thing as long as the core features are working flawlessly. EDIT: Apparently they removed really useful features which is a bad development.
- singularity2001 8y ago
  They removed the superfluous "detect/connect microphone" feature. Update: Wow so many upvotes, someone should create a webrtc startup.
  - kwindla 8y ago
    :-) ... We're a WebRTC startup - https://daily.co https://daily.co - completely free WebRTC calls in Chrome, up to 50 participants in a call, free dial-in numbers in 25+ countries. Meeting recording coming later this month. Edge and Safari support soon.
    - singularity2001 8y ago
      "Sign in with Google" sorry you lost me right there. Also tried 'Just click' but no demo opened.
- _ZeD_ 8y ago
  your superfluous is my essential. one thing is to start small, the other one to remove for the sake of removing
- Strom 8y ago
  The Windows 10 version removed microphone volume control. You would think that this is a core feature for Skype, but apparently not. To make matters even worse, Skype now not only automatically chooses the microphone volume but also changes the global Windows mic volume. Which means that I have to reconfigure the mic volume after every call I make with Skype, because otherwise the volume is all messed up in every other app. It really boggles my mind.

erikb 8y ago

Always when you hear the word "Enterprise" and it's not related to Star Trek it usually means "company that has made it so far and so stable up on the food chain that from now on they don't need to work hard anymore". If you have never worked in Enterprise software development, think about putting 100 first semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them act "professional". What do you think happens if you hand over a relatively well developed software to such a team? Now let a few years pass and you have today's Skype.

noonespecial 8y ago
>putting 100 first semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them act "professional". That had to be the most succinct description of the corporate work environment I've ever encountered. I'm shamelessly stealing that. Well said.
- erikb 8y ago
  no problem, CC-BY-SA.
  - Exuma 8y ago
    Did you just license your phrase?
    - erikb 8y ago
      You can also buy an enterprise license. Just contact our very competent sales team for a quote and NDA.
      - noonespecial 8y ago
        ...they will be wearing costumes, be on drugs, and be dedicated to "professionalism". You will not able to get a quote without a meeting in person to discuss "features and options" of the product in order to "synergize with your existing ERP marketplace strategy".

Spooky23 8y ago

They just stopped paying attention to Skype and renamed Lync/Office Communications Server/Live Communications Server to “Skype for Business”. They are distinct things that suck in their own unique ways for their own unique reasons. Lync was a garbage product, and renaming it didn’t magically fix it. Almost a decade into its inclusion in Office 365, it still doesn’t integrate with AD the same way as the rest of Office. The whole product saddles the customer with a bizarre application architecture that pushes complexity on the customer. (Pop a beer and check out the networking requirements sometime! https://support.office.com/en-us/article/office-365-urls-and-ip-address-ranges-8548a211-3fe7-47cb-abb1-355ea5aa88a2?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#bkmk_lyo https://support.office.com/en-us/article/office-365-urls-and... ) Both Microsoft and Google fubar this function because these text/voice/meeting products really exist because the vendors see them as a lever to control their enterprise customers. Offering a function, coherent communications platform is a secondary or teritary consideration.

israrkhan 8y ago

This happened because they migrated skype from a peer to peer software to centralized servers. While this has enabled certain innovations, like web-based skype and better integeration with other devices, it negatively impacted overall quality of skype.

cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
It also got the US Intelligence Community off they are back as it gives them a single point of interception.
saagarjha 8y ago
Why can you not have a peer-to-peer Skype that works on the web?
- monocasa 8y ago
  WebRTC didn't exist at the time.
dmitriid 8y ago
You can't have peer-to-peer and expect it to work on mobile phones.
- monocasa 8y ago
  Why not? The signaling layer DHT probably shouldn't be on the phone clients, but everything else should be fine.
  - dmitriid 8y ago
    Because data plans and batteries run out too quickly. And the quality of the networks is really bad compared to non-mobile networks
    - monocasa 8y ago

DenisM 8y ago

>Having done absolutely nothing would have left Skype in a better shape You don't get a promotion for doing nothing. Doing something, on the other hand, might just work.

winrid 8y ago

I know people that work on the Skype team. They don't write unit tests for example, "because we sell code not tests". So maybe that gives a clue.

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
Man, if ever there was an example that justified requiring professional accreditation for commercial programmers...

LifeLiverTransp 8y ago

https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522 https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522 Cooperate customers (and secret service) demanded it- but it turned out to be a quality of call death spiral.

Gustomaximus 8y ago

For the usability/design side, I've seen this happen when you have designers/product manager attached full time to a product that aren't needed. The product is fine but now they have to justify their role ongoing so keep making updates that are simply not needed. Or a new designer is hired and they cant agree the last guy did a great job and do a couple of small tweaks. Because you cant justify a role for a year on that. They have to 'improve it'.