For Rob: (No, I won't both­er reg­is­ter­ing in a site to be able to post a com­men­t, so this is eas­ier).

With­out even con­sid­er­ing the po­lit­i­cal stuff, which I don't give a damn about, here's what I find nice about hav­ing Skype in Lin­ux:

• You can use skype­out and call long dis­­­tance or in­­ter­­na­­tion­al very cheap­­­ly

• You can re­­place your com­­pa­ny-wide phone sys­tem with it (or nev­er both­­er to in­­stall phones), al­though I pre­fer to use {g­nome,net}meet­ing or ophone for this sort of thing.

• It does work from be­hind a fire­wal­l, which is what has­n't let me use MSN or sim­i­lar AV sys­tem­s.

• Since it works on Lin­ux, I can use it.

Of course all this as­sumes Skype works as ad­ver­tised. But if you know of an al­ter­na­tive that can do all that, that would be even bet­ter!

I agree that for lo­cal call­s, if you have lit­tle need for a phone, it may make no sense. Some­times. In some places, lo­cal calls are free. Here, I pay by the minute.

Skype would save mon­ey in some cas­es, when I need to have a two-hour-­long talk with a clien­t.

In short: would I pre­fer to have a free, open source pro­gram that does all the above? Sure! (although I can't imag­ine how Skype­out could be free).

Would I pre­fer not to have Skype? Hell no!

So, while not ide­al, it's good. And if it's good... well, that's good, is­n't it? Then why gripe?