this is a short test to get the topic created, as there's a bug in the forum (apache is crashing with an internal server error). i narrowed it down to one sentence which of course i can't post because it causes apache to crash.

several initial things i should say:
1) i love skype and that it's easy to use and allows me to keep in touch with friends across the world
2) i love that it runs on linux, therefore i put up with it being proprietary.
3) i'm curious as to why skype haven't bothered to set up a bugtracker: surely the people monitoring these forums haven't got time to cut/paste _every_ bug report - especially on a minority product like skype for linux

okay that's over with - on to the bug reports.

1) you don't bother to close the sound card device after opening it.

on the 1.2 skype-for-linux releases, this meant that you kept opening and opening and opening and opening /dev/dsp. result: after about 8 open file handles (corresponding to about 8 phone calls) skype 1.2 would fail to open any more file handles (which obviously caused the phone call to fail).

you can _easily_ check that you haven't bothered to close /dev/dsp by doing 'lsmod | grep snd' and counting the number of times that the main sound card module is 'in use'.

2) this same bug has still not been fixed in 1.3.0.30

... but the symptoms are more erratic and less obvious: it takes slightly longer for the ALSA sound system to keel over.

3) after leaving skype 1.3.0.30 open for a few hours, any use of sound has very weird behaviour on playback: it alternates voice and silence approximately every second.

also i've made phone calls to people who have said that my voice also alternates (to them) with silence, every other second.

this is particularly irritating on voicemail but it doesn't cut every other
second _out_ - it just pauses every second then carries on where it
left off.

i'm guessing that all of 1, 2, and 3 are all inter-related.

4) the failure-to-start bug is still present.

after quitting skype 1.3.0.30 due to the above bugs, in order to free up the
open file handles on the sound card that you haven't bothered to close,
i restart - only to find, occasionally, that it sits there, not doing anything.

the solution?

delete the entire ~/.Skype directory - which is really irritating.

now.

here's the thing, guys.

_if_ you bothered - like i've been suggesting you do for over two years now - _if_ you bothered to create a daemon version of skype (a library, effectively) _then_ i or others with free software skills could write front-ends _for_ you.

this takes the load off of you, and it benefits us - because you're always late with skype-for-linux, and behind on features (there's call forwarding which we can't use, because you haven't bothered to add it to skype-for-linux)

do you understand?

not only that, but it would mean that people could write gateway services to skype. e.g. embedding skype into asterisk. or into a shockwave flash plugin so that people who don't have access to their personal computer, or who can't install skype on a machine, could go to a web address and use skype via the flash plugin.

and _you_ wouldn't have to be the one to do that work.

so please, get your act together, before it's too late, and someone else other than that chinese team reverse-engineer your protocol and make you irrelevant.

[quote=lkcl]_if_ you bothered - like i've been suggesting you do for over two years now - _if_ you bothered to create a daemon version of skype (a library, effectively) _then_ i or others with free software skills could write front-ends _for_ you.

this takes the load off of you, and it benefits us - because you're always late with skype-for-linux, and behind on features (there's call forwarding which we can't use, because you haven't bothered to add it to skype-for-linux)

do you understand?

not only that, but it would mean that people could write gateway services to skype. e.g. embedding skype into asterisk. or into a shockwave flash plugin so that people who don't have access to their personal computer, or who can't install skype on a machine, could go to a web address and use skype via the flash plugin.

and _you_ wouldn't have to be the one to do that work.

so please, get your act together, before it's too late, and someone else other than that chinese team reverse-engineer your protocol and make you irrelevant.[/quote]

Hear Hear!