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Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

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Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#51

Post by martingxx »

PieterH wrote: post #38

My guess at the origins of this project... Firm somewhere far away where Microsoft's lawyers cannot reach (China?) wanted Skype capability in their product and paid this smart Russian guy to reverse-engineer the Skype client. Smart guy gets permission to open source it and publishes it with commercial license option with hopes of finding more such clients. Personally I'd not touch this with a 3-meter bargepole, becau…

If this is newly written code not based on Skype code then there is clearly no copyright issue. Trademark is a potential problem but easily solved by removing the Skype name from the project.

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#52

Post by PeterisP »

michaelmior wrote: post #26
Sephr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to profit from this. You're not being forced to use a commercial license, and the LGPL is adequate for most open source use cases.

Reversing in the first place is almost certainly illegal if you were to check the Skype ToS. Making a profit off it is just asking for trouble. I could be wrong though.

ToS only applies to terms of continuing use of a service, if you're prepared to not be an user anymore, then the conditons of ToS are not worth the paper they're (not) written on, you can simply not accept those terms. Click-through and shrink-wrap licencing terms are not binding almost everywhere (they likely could be in USA, though).

And while USA has DMCA, in most of the world copyright (as according to Berne convention) doesn't prohibit reverse engineering but only grants a limited monopoly on copying with some exceptions - often including interoperability, so you can do that even if the copyright holder disagrees.

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#53

Post by 0xmohit »

besselheim wrote: post #50

I remember seeing an earlier incarnation of this around five years ago; I'm very impressed with the author's dedication to this project. I don't know if it is still the case now, but I recall that earlier versions of Skype were quite heavily obfuscated and contained anti-debugging mechanisms. So it would have been quite an intricate reversing effort to get past these, on top of figuring out the protocol. Over time, M…

> I remember seeing an earlier incarnation of this around five years ago

https://github.com/skypeopensource/skypeopensource

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#55

Post by fnj »

mac01021 wrote: post #34
Jach wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the old and not as often used "stereotype". But it doesn't have the emotional impact like racist does, so... Anything that doesn't hit squarely at the pathos is right out.

Yeah. I guess I was saying that we, the Anglophone world, need to pick an equally effective word for this meaning. I think probably “xenophobic” is more accurate than “racist” in this case, but still not quite right.

The word "xenoracism" has actually been applied, but it strikes me as a make-do lashed-together word. "Xenotyping" is no good because it already has a precise scientific definition. "Stereotyping" ends up the best description, though it's less than satisfactorily insulting.

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#56

Post by PieterH »

martingxx wrote: post #51
PieterH wrote: post #38

My guess at the origins of this project... Firm somewhere far away where Microsoft's lawyers cannot reach (China?) wanted Skype capability in their product and paid this smart Russian guy to reverse-engineer the Skype client. Smart guy gets permission to open source it and publishes it with commercial license option with hopes of finding more such clients. Personally I'd not touch this with a 3-meter bargepole, becau…

If this is newly written code not based on Skype code then there is clearly no copyright issue. Trademark is a potential problem but easily solved by removing the Skype name from the project.

Lawyers are paid to make cases. Here, it's quite simple. The author of this code saw the Skype code, indeed he admits it. Then he wrote new code. Same person. Your honor, it is unreasonable for him to claim that his new code was not heavily influenced by what he had seen. It is like me listening to a song and then writing a new one "heavily inspired by it", and then claiming I'm not committing copyright infringement.

Lawyers make such arguments all the time and it comes down to who has the time & money to take them to court, and defend against them, and then the judge is a human who decides, and is heavily influenceable.

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#57

Post by PieterH »

Iv wrote: post #46
PieterH wrote: post #38

My guess at the origins of this project... Firm somewhere far away where Microsoft's lawyers cannot reach (China?) wanted Skype capability in their product and paid this smart Russian guy to reverse-engineer the Skype client. Smart guy gets permission to open source it and publishes it with commercial license option with hopes of finding more such clients. Personally I'd not touch this with a 3-meter bargepole, becau…

> because I live in a country where people use copyright I live in a EU country where interoperability is a law yet is almost never respected, so I say, fuck copyright in that case. However, this is not the first successful reverse engineering of skype. Each time they broke compatibility with their next version.

As I said, people use copyright law to take other people to court, and then get money from them. Your "fuck copyright" statement is bold, and one I'd generally agree with, unfortunately it has zero relevance to the legal risks a business would take, using this code in a commercial product, in such a country.

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#58

Post by besselheim »

0xmohit wrote: post #53
besselheim wrote: post #50

I remember seeing an earlier incarnation of this around five years ago; I'm very impressed with the author's dedication to this project. I don't know if it is still the case now, but I recall that earlier versions of Skype were quite heavily obfuscated and contained anti-debugging mechanisms. So it would have been quite an intricate reversing effort to get past these, on top of figuring out the protocol. Over time, M…

> I remember seeing an earlier incarnation of this around five years ago https://github.com/skypeopensource/skypeopensource

The site I recall was Blogspot rather than Github: https://web.archive.org/web/20110602182718/http://skype-open...

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#59

Post by PieterH »

jacquesm wrote: post #43
PieterH wrote: post #38

My guess at the origins of this project... Firm somewhere far away where Microsoft's lawyers cannot reach (China?) wanted Skype capability in their product and paid this smart Russian guy to reverse-engineer the Skype client. Smart guy gets permission to open source it and publishes it with commercial license option with hopes of finding more such clients. Personally I'd not touch this with a 3-meter bargepole, becau…

Telecommunications products should be based around open protocols. That Skype keeps their protocols to themselves should not be reason enough to send lawyers after software implementing interoperability after reverse engineering. Re-using the reverse engineered code is the problem, he should have simply used it to spec out the protocol and then use that spec to re-implement it.

One team documents the protocol as a spec. A second team takes the spec and writes implementations. The advantage of this for open source is that when the protocol changes, it's relatively simple for that first team to update the spec, and safe for the second team to update their code.

This is legal and safe. It is how the first clone PCs survived even IBM's lawyers.

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#60

Post by martinko »

PieterH wrote: post #38

My guess at the origins of this project... Firm somewhere far away where Microsoft's lawyers cannot reach (China?) wanted Skype capability in their product and paid this smart Russian guy to reverse-engineer the Skype client. Smart guy gets permission to open source it and publishes it with commercial license option with hopes of finding more such clients. Personally I'd not touch this with a 3-meter bargepole, becau…

> Personally I'd not touch this with a 3-meter bargepole, because I live in a country where people use copyright and trademark law to take people to court, yet it's an interesting project.

You feel using it would open you up to a copyright claim?

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