I feel that it is unfair how Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are treating software developers. Skype was sold for $2.6 bn to Ebay under the guise that Skype will be developed as 'an environment with an ecosystem of happy developers' .

But few Skype software developers and companies are happy about
the low level of financial assistance they are receiving:

1. The 2006 Skype competition offers a ridiculous $2000 to the
winner and $500 to 5 runners up. It probably costs more in time and
effort to developers to develop the applications.

What makes matters worse, is that it seems that E-bay and not
Skype took the lead last year, in encouraging innovation by giving away a prize for developers.

2. If a developer wants to partner with Skype by signing up to it's
partner enquiry form, he / she must be with a company or sign up as a company. What about the multitude of developers, contractors, consultants and other professionals that do not belong to a company, but that wants contribute to VOIP Skype development?

3. It is unbelievable the low level of support vb.net and c# developers are receiving.

4. Many developers and small software businesses had hoped that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis would invest in them or offer financial support and incentives to facilitate innovation. From the days of Kazaa, it has been our software that has been pirated on the Kazaa network - while Zennstrom and Friis were the principal beneficiaries.

Developers can understand that if it weren't for Kazaa, the technology of Skype might never have been achieved. And Skype is an enormous achievement. But many developers, contractors and consultants were hoping to enter or start up a business in the VOIP market with Skype, with financial investment, incentives, perhaps loans - and
top programming documentation and support.

It is very difficult for small firms to enter the VOIP market. Most small firms have to focus on their core source of income. Any VOIP projects must be undertaken as additional projects, because of the risks and uncertainties involved. It is difficult for them to succeed on their own strength and efforts alone. This is the case everywhere in the world, but especially for businesses in the developing world. Innovative companies in India, South Africa and Eastern Europe do not have the resources and financial markets. It is rarely that they succeed without help.

Many had hoped that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis would understand these matters and assist developers, because not so long ago they too had to search for investment in their ideas; had to run from venture capitalist to venture capitalist.

Wynand Meyering

Hi Wynand

Usually I stay away from these types of posts and let someone official give you the company line.

However I happen to agree with your points. At least points 1, 2, and 3.
I’m not worried about point 4 as the money side of thing doesn’t concern me and I don’t know what is going on in this area. I know it is being invested and it will take time to reach all its intended places.

I will address the points that I am familiar with just to give you some background.

1) Skype DevContest.
This is our second API contest, the last contest proved pretty popular with single prize of €2000 and several runners up prizes of €500.

This time around we have 3 categories with 3 prizes of €2000 (€6000 total) + 15 runner up prizes of €500 each (€7500 total). So the total prize fund is €13,500.

eBay did have bigger grand prize for their contest. My prize fund came from budget that was allocated before the eBay take over so the money available to me was less.

I actually put the contest together before eBay launched their contest, but I with held it because it didn’t make sense to have to contests going on at the same time.


2) Developer Form
This form was in place before my time and should be updated. I think the goal was to find out who was using our API not to impose limits on who can develop applications.

We welcome all developers, whether you are a large ISV or developing applications in your free time.

3) c# support
What support? All you have is 2 or 3 how to building video that I put together ages ago.
Our VB guys only have part 1 of a promised series of how to videos I intended to make.

Imagine how our Linux and Mac guys feel.

This frustrates me more than anything so I know how our community feels. There is so much I want to do here, so many big ideas, so many plans waiting to spring into action.

Our developer community is growing quicker than we can handle and its something we are trying to improve on but right now we need to hire people to help do all the good stuff you guys need.

If anyone is interested in working for Skype to help with producing samples, snippets of code, training courses, workshops, videos, and generally making sure that developers have all the resources we they need then you should keep an eye on our jobs page http://www.skype.com/company/jobs/

I am happy to take this offline with you (or anyone) and have sent you a PM, please feel free to discuss with me and this is something that I want to put right.

Thanx Lesterm,

Thank you for your prompt reply. I appreciate that you are doing your best.

Yes, we had high expectations for Skype development.

Wynand I thank you for your understanding and I thank you for your post bringing this to our attention you raised some good points here.

I know all the problems you face and I share them. Your comments are great because unless people like yourself raise these questions then they never get answered and we never move forward.

Right now Skype is a small company that is growing very quickly. At the moment there are around 250 employees at Skype worldwide turning out the magic. Our customers have such high expectations of us they are so hard to meet.

I am not making excuses, I know personally I can do much better for you guys, and believe me I want to.

Please if you have any concerns, questions, comments etc do contact me. I will do all I can to help. I like to think I am the approachable so please contact me. Add me to you buddies list LesterMadden (just remember to tell me who you are)

If you are successful then we are successful. Just let me know how I can help.

Before I head off, if you are reading this then you obviously care a great deal about Skype. http://www.skype.com/company/jobs/i is our jobs page. Its your chance to make a difference.

Lester

Skype ID LesterMadden

[quote=Wynand Meyering]
I feel that it is unfair how Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are treating software developers.
[/quote]

Excellent observations!

Back in July 2005 Stuart Henshall gave low marks to the developer ecosystem as he reported in this blog ( http://www.skypejournal.com/blog/archives/...e_developer.php )

Unfortunately little has changed since then...

As a developer myself I would have hoped that by now it might be possible to make money from the "Skype developer ecosystem".

I do not expect 'free money' of any kind from Skype. But a number of disincentives continue to exist for application developers...

Problem: The danger of Skype creating the same feature in 'the next version'
Examples: Answering machines, call forwarding, video
Solution: Skype road map outlining features which will be added in the coming months

Problem: Lack of developer 'business' support
Solution: More staff who are motivated to assist developers in partnering with Skype to bring solutions to market

Problem: Lack of payment system
Solution: Create a payment system and accompanying interface for developers...!

Problem: Flow of information to and from Skype at a business and technical level
Solution: Make regular communication with the 'public' an objective for all Skype staff - and not just blogs about where in the world the particular Skype staff member is at the time... :-)

Just some thoughts...

Best wishes
Blogwatcher

[quote=blogwatcher]Problem: The danger of Skype creating the same feature in 'the next version'
Examples: Answering machines, call forwarding, video
Solution: Skype road map outlining features which will be added in the coming months[/quote]
although i personally favour the idea of sharing our product roadmaps with the developer community out there, it wouldn't solve the problem entirely. as long as you don't patent your idea (and let's not start a flamewar about software patents here ) there will always be the risk that someone else (skype itself or another developer) would create a better (or better-selling) implementation of the idea. and quite probably someone will give his implementation away for free.

from my personal point of view, building a business around selling software licenses to mass market has become somewhat questionable idea in today's world where the software business is affected both by the widening spread of free and open-source software, and by the bigger companies centering their business models around the sale of services instead of licenses.

now i wish i would know the perfect solution to that

[quote=blogwatcher]Problem: Lack of developer 'business' support
Solution: More staff who are motivated to assist developers in partnering with Skype to bring solutions to market[/quote]
some of our business development folks already work with the [software] solution developers, and the road to them starts from the partner contact form. and since they're bizdev guys, they obviously look first and foremost at the business perspective of your solution: is there something of value for skype or not. so be careful to provide your guesstimates about the market potential in addition to the technical description of the solution.

[quote=blogwatcher]Problem: Lack of payment system
Solution: Create a payment system and accompanying interface for developers...![/quote]
known issue and i've heard there are people in skype already designing this interface.

[quote=blogwatcher]Problem: Flow of information to and from Skype at a business and technical level
Solution: Make regular communication with the 'public' an objective for all Skype staff - and not just blogs about where in the world the particular Skype staff member is at the time... :-)[/quote]
another known issue. i (as head of our little [technical] developer support team) and antoine bertout (as the remaining half of the team) have already accepted monitoring and contributing to this forum as a part of our daily duties. skype has already hired a couple of people to create better technical documentation. and we're working on the new developer website (expected to go live later this month) that would further improve our ability to deliver useful content to the developer community.

i know we're not perfect, but at least we try to listen, and get better.