On Tue, 10 May 2011, Florin Iucha wrote: > On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 02:26:46PM -0500, Mike Miller wrote: > >> That's what matters to me with Skype. It's a paying service anyway. >> It might not even be possible to develop a free-software/open-source >> solution for that because people might find ways to cheat -- I'm sure >> that's a major concern. > > There are three kinds of expenses: the equipment, the bandwidth and the > connection to POTS. There isn't much you can cheat on any of them > before you can call it outright stealing. Obviously (I thought), the part I would think Skype would be concerned about (with regard to free software) was the POTS aspect and billing. There is another thing that I didn't think to mention earlier -- they have some kind of scheme where they use your bandwidth while Skype is running in the background. Here's something about it: http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2009/02/24/skype-steals-bandwidth-%E2%80%94-even-when-you-are-not-using-it/ I once heard that it had something to do with routing calls, but I don't know what they are doing. I keep it fully off unless I'm actually using it or expecting a call. It would be nice to have a free-software solution that allows POTS billing and has a central registry to allow people to call to a computer. What do you think? Can that be done? Mike