I see a lot of wisdom in his words. The power of his ideas is what sways
me. We should always listen, and not be judgemental/dogmatic.

I don't use Skype. It's NSA infected and proprietary crap.

His example though is instructive, and definitely holds.

On 05/27/2014 10:25 PM, Adam Gibson wrote:
> <cross posted from private message>
>
> ... but let's look at the actual issues at hand - the
> Skype model and the content of the article.
>
> On that, I remain profoundly unimpressed by the content of the article
> - which is basically trying to say that Bitcoin can learn from Skype.
> No, the Skype model is not one for Bitcoiners to emulate, arguably
> it's not really relevant.
>
> Some points from the article:
>
> "These principles allowed us to operate Skype across the whole world,
> with minimal legal costs and no effect on the main parts of the business"
>
> This is what I mean by "disingenuous" and "ducking and diving". They
> managed to avoid getting caught in the net just long enough like this
> - but when it came down to it, they just sold their IP to eBay and
> then Microsoft. If they really had some brilliant plan to work in this
> way, why are they not still working like that today?
>
> "Most importantly, these lessons enabled Skype to become one of the
> leading tools that people use to communicate and forged the way to
> achieving our original dream. A dream that has become reality.
> Today, the whole world can indeed talk for free. Bitcoin companies
> have the potential to make the same waves in the financial sphere."
>
> In this passage he actually claims that Skype *today* has become the
> dream of people talking for free. People think this is great? Am I
> accidentally in the NSA mailing list here?
>
> That's just two snippets. I think I could find 3 or 4 more to support
> the gist of my argument, but this is already long.
>
> Skype is not a success story for those of us interested in freedom.
> It's a story of selling out. And it all comes back to the idea of
> decentralisation - Skype's was (and of course still is) proprietary,
> so that its peer to peer nature was never a defence against regulation
> or government power. Bitcoin was and remains 100% open source, and
> that's a sine qua non.
>
> Adam
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