Naked Skype?
A forum user known as spud5 just came up with rather an interesting idea:
Make the Skype “engine” available to developers, without the Skype GUI. This would allow developers to build a variety of applications/interfaces to use the Skype communications network. The end users, especially businesses, would have a choice of GUI supplier, and Skype would take more PSTN call revenue.
I wonder what the rest of the developer community would think of it.
]]>P.S. I am terribly not really sorry for those readers who ended up here searching for a certain kind of pictures. The first word of this posts’ title should actually be interpreted as in “naked bike” 
Think this is a brilliant idea. I want to make a skype bot that can live on a linux server and do all sorts of cool things like sending reminder alerts to people, starting conferences, playing text to speech files to people on mobile phones, recording messages posted to it to a database… the list goes on. Currently the only way I can do this is to have skype running as a application in a virtual frame buffer and access the API. Running X on a server to render a GUI that no-one will ever see is not good for efficiency and stability.
A command line/server/library version of Skype would be excellent solution.
If we could run Skype on windows as service or on linux (without X dependecies) as daemon that would be one of the greatest features of skype.
Best idea I ever heard. By the way, you could move the Skype deamon to pure Java, enabling fast multiplatform software development for the developers and saving you lot of time and money for maintenance of currently 4 diffenrent versions (with Java only 1). Since Java 1.5 performace problems are almost gone, access to native OS GUI components is done nicely by SWT and probably Java is going to be included by default in Vista. This would be great – image a demo of building a Skype application done in 10 minutes using Eclipse RCP and running the same code on Win 2000/XP/Server 2003 and Mobile, Mac OS X and Linux…
Skype actually announced SkypeNet already last August. SkypeNet is pretty much what is described here, but without audio support, at least in the initial versions. Many developers and Skype partners have expressed a lot of interest in the concept and hoping that the SkypeNet plans will materialize one day. SkypeWeb, announced on the same day, was launched early in 2006.
Actually, I just posted relating to this last week and the problems of developing a workable bot while notifications (of missed chats and calls) are so difficult to disable in the Public API forum.
As an intermediate step to a ‘naked’ Skype, I think adding the ability to the client to disable all notifications of missed chats and calls in the advanced section would be a great start in this direction.
Something like this would be great. I’m currently (trying) to add javascript bindings to the SkypeAPI (WebKit on OSX for the moment) but since I’m Intel and Skype on MAC API is PowerPC, I seem to be a bit stuck (Rosetta doesnt help here it seems). Now, if someone would release an Intel build …..
You should talk to the authors of “Naked Conversations” about the draw of, and response to, their title.
“probably Java is going to be included by default in Vista.”
Where on earth did you hear that?
This will not happen as MS had to take Java out of Windows due to a Sun lawsuit. So why would they put it back? To get sued again?
This makes so much sense, for so many reasons, I can’t believe it hasn’t been done yet.
I must admit that I haven’t read the book; the name stems from that of the motorbikes stripped of everything that can be taken away in order to minimise the mass and unleash the raw power.
Thanks terminuz. Comparing two non-existant solutions, SkypeNet beats ‘Naked Skype’ for me – I can live voice stuff for the moment. I’d prefer not to have to have anything extra running on my server.
It was quite frustrating to read the upbeat announcement and see that nothing’s happened on it…
Can the Skype team shed any light on the status of the project? Peeter, Lester, Mat Taylor?!
I reckon that “not having to run anything extra on your server” is one of the biggest arguments for Naked Skype, with the other one being the ability to create custom user interfaces tailored for specific niche markets — online action gamers, naughty kids and their control-obsessed parents, all sorts of enterprises, etc, etc.
Now that jos3000 said that he’d be happy without voice for starters, I came to think of breaking the Naked Skype into base platform that takes care of the lowest-level functions common to **any** Skype applications, and add-on modules for audio, video, and later — when someone invents a technology for digitizing and replicating physical objects — teleportation.
Some of it is definitely science fiction, but as I am not a member of our architecture team, I can’t tell which parts are science and which are fiction.
I’d really have some use for a naked Skype. I’m toying with bots and the APIs, and it would be great if I could set up my bots without all those windows cluttering my screen. For server-side-style development, the GUI just gets in the way.
cool idea! then we could probably make our mcePhone run on the new XBox360. currenty security features of skype client with opening winapi-windows all the time permits that…
Looking forward to open source apps that “Powered by SkypeCore (TM)”
Very nice idea.
This is very similar to what has been asked for at the following jira entry…
https://developer.skype.com/jira/browse/SPA-13
I suggest we all get on there and vote for it!
On thing to be done is a live screen capture
so the user could be able share the screen
it could be implimented by a screen capture driver
so you could change between video camera and the screen video capture driver
and then you have a easy emeeting software
best regards Lars
SPA-13 is a bit different thing. As Naked Skype would be complex enough to be considered an “improvement” or “new feature”, and as there are various issues that need to be addressed before even thinking of implementing this, I’ve created a wikipage in the Developer Zone where the developer community can specify their requirements, and suggest solutions to the relevant problems.
See https://developer.skype.com/wiki/NakedSkype and collaborate
I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus…naked skype would be the hardcore. It would be nice to pick and choose chunks of the skype network to include in our own applications without the GUI (and honestly, it would let somebody make a not-so-hideous linux gui…). Here’s to getting naked!
I would immediatly put a team together to build a low cost PC-less skype phone.
I would be interested in this too.
At the moment advanced controling of Skype is pain in the a**
Plug-in support would be great too (like winamp style)
if we can’t have GUI-less Skype.
Greetings from Slovenia
so… what does the company think about that idea now?
סקייפ
a naked skype engine is a very good idea. Perhaps it’s possible to install it on an embedded linux device with ARM architecture or something like that. It would be possible to build skype devices in hardware!