Skype is Microsoft's Latest Casualty. Can Open Source Save it?

Well, it's officially done; Microsoft has done away with Skype, marking May 5, 2025, as the day of its demise. They say that they have done this to streamline their consumer communications offerings so that they can “more easily adapt to customer needs”.

Existing Skype users are being nudged towards Teams as the replacement, with easy data carry over being offered. Others who don't want to switch to Teams can opt to export their Skype data.

Once a leading communications platform, Skype has seen a steep decline—raising the question, What went wrong? 🤔

A Quick Look Back in Time

With its founding in 2003, Skype started off as a peer-to-peer (P2P) voice communication platform, quickly gaining 1 million concurrent users by 2004. Skype was then acquired by eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005, with it launching a video calling service by 2006.

In September 2009, eBay sold off a majority stake (70%) in Skype to a consortium of investors led by private equity firm Silver Lake due to Skype not fitting well within their core business. Come 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype for a whopping $8.5 billion.

Two years later, Skype replaced Windows Live Messenger as the default messaging and communication platform for Microsoft. By April 2017, Skype had completely moved away from its peer-to-peer roots, opting for a more centralized cloud-based approach.

That process is said to have started during the Silver Lake era, according to former Principal Architect at Skype, Matthew Kaufman.

In the following years, Skype was more deeply integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem through products like Office 365. Unfortunately, rising competition from platforms like Zoom, Slack, and WhatsApp, along with internal competition from Teams, contributed to its rapid decline, bringing us to this grim outcome.

Why not open source it?

Microsoft is known to offer/support many open source projects; specially in the last ten years. The optimist in me hopes that they could do something similar for Skype, perhaps by releasing the old P2P protocol they used back in the day.

However, the rational side of me understands that there are many proprietary components in there, and open sourcing Skype or any of its components won't be straightforward. Plus, knowing Microsoft, they won't just fork over bits of their pricey possession for public use.

Anyhow, if you were one of those affected by the shutdown of Skype, why not go for open source alternatives instead of switching to Teams?

🎗️

Here's why you should opt for It's FOSS Plus Membership:

- Even the biggest players in the Linux world don't care about desktop Linux users. We do.
- We don't put informational content behind paywall. Your support keeps it open for everyone. Think of it like 'pay it forward'.
- Don't like ads? With the Plus membership, you get an ad-free reading experience.
- When millions of AI-generated content is being published daily, you read and learn from real human Linux users.
- It costs just $2 a month, less than the cost of your favorite burger.

Become a Plus Member today and join over 300 people in supporting our work.