Best FOSS alternative for skype?

[JD]

On 05/11/11 09:22, Tim wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-05-11 at 08:32 -0700, James McKenzie wrote:
>> Here is some serious food for thought (and no this is not to induce a
>> flame war, but for those who have a problem with companies 'making
>> money')
> There's a big difference between making money, and being an ass about
> it.  Though /some/ companies just don't seem to get that...
>> Would any of us go to a major computer manufacturing company and
>> DEMAND the same thing that we DEMAND of software?  That is:  Give me
>> your latest/greatest for free?
> Well, I wish more people would do with computer industries as we expect
> of other companies.  When you sell me a product, it had better bloody
> work properly and safely.  If you sell me a dodgy product, you (the
> company) have to fix it at your cost.
>
> Or would you (the customer) like to shoulder the additional burden of
> fixing up your *new* car's lousy design having crappy brakes, fuel
> injection, seat belts, or anything else?  Simply because the
> manufacturer doesn't give a damn about the product actually being any
> good.
>
> Microsoft, et al, probably even the entire computer industry, have
> justly earned the contempt that they receive.  Decades of experience,
> billions of dollars, and still a continual cock-up.
>> And no, I don't mind that they are going to take it 'propriatary'
>> either.  They have to do something above and beyond the standard to
>> make us want to purchase it.
> I do, I mind that a lot.  At home, I have one telephone on my desk, and
> I can ring anybody on the world with it, no matter what telephone
> network that they're on.
>
> That can't be done with VOIP.  There's a plethora of different
> completely incompatible systems.  Which leaves you either with having to
> have a collection of VOIP applications, or arguing with other people to
> shovel them all onto the same proprietary system.
>
> And, no, buying into some proprietary system which offers to act as a
> gateway between (some) of them isn't an answer, either.  They will not
> be a gateway to all of them.  What about the other systems that they
> don't/won't/can't gateway.  And then there's the quality issues involved
> in recompressing audio between different schemes.  This isn't the 19th
> century any more, I want damn good voice quality, where I don't have to
> guess at what someone said through the haze.
>
> We've had a decade of that incompatibility crap with all the different
> instant messaging schemes, and people just will not learn how dumb,
> stupid, moronic, idiotic, annoying, absolutely brain dead that attitude
> is.
>
+1