>Obviously I'd rather use an open platform and open protocol but it has to be [very nearly] as simple to set up as Skype and as stable in this particular case.

>Obviously I'd rather use an open platform and open protocol but it has to be [very nearly] as simple to set up as Skype and as stable in this particular case. Gmail already meets that bar for me and my family, and the (Google) Linux client is much better than Skype's. The interoperability with open-source implementations was pretty bad last time I checked though.