License issues for SkypeKit plugin

[Thijs Alkemade]

Yeah, I'm aware of that, but from what I've heard about the SkypeKit
license (I don't have it myself, and I'm not a lawyer), it explicitly
forbids one instance of a "product" from signing multiple accounts
into Skype and also forbids "Server Applications".

About SkypeKit in general, I'd really like Adium to officially support
Skype, but SkypeKit is just not it. It sounds a legal minefield. Even
if we would find a weird multi-process way to not violate the SkypeKit
license and the GPL, their API uses developer keys they can revoke
whenever they feel like it. If their lawyers decide they don't like
our legal trick they can block us in a second, with nothing to fall
back on.

Thijs

On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 5:12 PM, Joe Hildebrand (jhildebr)
<jhildebr at cisco.com> wrote:
> If you were to build that by putting it into an XMPP server, it would be
> what we used to call a "transport", and other clients would be able to use
> it also.  You typically write a transport as a standalone program that
> communicates to the XMPP server via XEP-0114
> (http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0114.html) and knows about XEP-0100
> (http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0100.html).
>
> On 11/11/12 5:43 AM, "Thijs Alkemade" <thijsalkemade at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>On Nov 11, 2012 2:59 AM, "John Bailey" <rekkanoryo at rekkanoryo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 11/10/2012 06:17 AM, Daniel Muhra wrote:
>>> > Anyhow, so the only solution for this case would be to pack all
>>>SkypeKit related stuff into a separate application and write a (GPL
>>>compatible) Adium plugin that uses IPC techniques to communicate with it.
>>> > Doesn't sound very elegant from a development perspective, but at
>>>least that should comply with the GPL, right?
>>>
>>> It also sounds like you'd have to be very careful with making sure your
>>>separate
>>> application remains a completely separate product to ensure compliance
>>>with the
>>> SkypeKit license.
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>>I think you could do this, and also save yourself a lot of work, by
>>writing it as a proxy for a protocol Adium already supports, like XMPP.
>>
>>Any functions you want for Skype but don't have on XMPP would be an
>>ad-hoc command or data form (audio chats might also work by simply having
>>the proxy application do the audio input and output, but for video I have
>>no idea).
>>I also have no idea wether the SkypeKit license actually allows this, or
>>if it's been done before. Spectrum 2 seems to support Skype, but that's
>>using the linux GUI client. So you'd have to read the license carefully.
>>But you're using a standardized protocol
>> to communicate with Adium, so it's easier to argue that they are
>>different "products".
>>Good luck,
>>Thijs Alkemade
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Joe Hildebrand
>
>
>
>