not being able to use Skype is a big problem

[Shawn Rutledge]

On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 3:19 PM, Alexey Feldgendler
<alexey at feldgendler.ru> wrote:
> Those I've seen work by running the actual Skype binary inside a virtual
> machine or some kind of a sandbox and routing audio to and from it. This
> probably wastes ten times more resources than it should.

It's unfortunate, but I'd rather waste some cycles on a server to get
a clean, open interface on the phone.  The problem is so many people
think of Skype first when they think of VoIP.  Why? Probably because
it "just works" - does a lot of sneaky stuff to get through various
kinds of firewalls, etc.

Anyway there is native Skype for Linux now, so maybe some of these are
using the published APIs, if that's possible... not sure.

http://zhink.com/site/main/?p=5   (claims to be all-software, running
on Linux, but is not free)

Some of them just have to be run on Windows though.  (and use the
published APIs)

A tougher alternative is to reverse-engineer it.

There is still an unclaimed bounty being offered for a proper free
Asterisk-Skype gateway that runs on Linux.