3 ms·

No, but openness has a lot of advantages. It means that it's free, it's guaranteed to be supported by someone even if the founders all go away, you can trust it

by selven 17y ago

No, but openness has a lot of advantages. It means that it's free, it's guaranteed to be supported by someone even if the founders all go away, you can trust it more since everyone can look at the source, and so on.

iuyhgbn 17y ago
You can't see the code inside Google's network so even though the client app is open you have no more proof that all your calls aren't being streamed to Langley or Beijing than you do with skype. An you can't have pay for service like calls to 'real' phones because if the billing was done in the client you could simply remove it, forcing all the billing to be done at their servers - which makes it much more expensive.
- thwarted 17y ago
  XMPP is an open protocol. There are encryption extensions. Gtalk is used for routing, so it's route-around-able if you have concerns about snooping, still letting you communicate with grandma's gtalk account who doesn't have concerns about the FBI. This is much harder to do with software like Skype (especially considering the obfuscation that has gone into hiding the operation of the Skype code). An you can't have pay for service like calls to 'real' phones because if the billing was done in the client you could simply remove it, forcing all the billing to be done at their servers - which makes it much more expensive. You mean like how land lines and cell phones do their billing on the provider's servers and don't do the billing in the phone itself because you could simply remove it?
  - iuyhgbn 17y ago
    Exactly like a phone company - except 10x cheaper because they don't have to pay for all that central billing and support services
JamieEi 17y ago
Which open source search engine do you use instead of Google?
- selven 17y ago
  Search engines are completely different from downloaded software - you can't avoid reliance on the provider unless you feel like writing your own web crawler and waiting for it to gather web content (even though it will never catch up with the volume of new stuff constantly being put on the 'net).

by selven 17y ago

iuyhgbn 17y ago

You can't see the code inside Google's network so even though the client app is open you have no more proof that all your calls aren't being streamed to Langley or Beijing than you do with skype. An you can't have pay for service like calls to 'real' phones because if the billing was done in the client you could simply remove it, forcing all the billing to be done at their servers - which makes it much more expensive.

thwarted 17y ago
XMPP is an open protocol. There are encryption extensions. Gtalk is used for routing, so it's route-around-able if you have concerns about snooping, still letting you communicate with grandma's gtalk account who doesn't have concerns about the FBI. This is much harder to do with software like Skype (especially considering the obfuscation that has gone into hiding the operation of the Skype code). An you can't have pay for service like calls to 'real' phones because if the billing was done in the client you could simply remove it, forcing all the billing to be done at their servers - which makes it much more expensive. You mean like how land lines and cell phones do their billing on the provider's servers and don't do the billing in the phone itself because you could simply remove it?
- iuyhgbn 17y ago
  Exactly like a phone company - except 10x cheaper because they don't have to pay for all that central billing and support services

JamieEi 17y ago

Which open source search engine do you use instead of Google?

selven 17y ago
Search engines are completely different from downloaded software - you can't avoid reliance on the provider unless you feel like writing your own web crawler and waiting for it to gather web content (even though it will never catch up with the volume of new stuff constantly being put on the 'net).