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eBay's Skype Dismisses Chinese Clone Rumors

Skype denied rumors of a Chinese clone of the VoIP software running on eBay's Skype network, developed through reverse-engineering.

Skype SuperNode networking is not supported by the reverse-engineered Chinese clone, putting VoIP users at ease after the initial concern that the network would become close to unusable as the nodes would have to carry information for Skype clone users.

Skype stated that it "is aware of the claim made by a small group of Chinese engineers that they have reverse engineered Skype software. We have no evidence to suggest that this is true. Even if it was possible to do this, the software code would lack the feature set and reliability of Skype, which is enjoyed by over 100 million users today. Moreover, no amount of reverse engineering would threaten Skype's cryptographic security or integrity."

Charlie Paglee, CEO at Vozin Communications, blogged about the cloned Skype program launching the news, but refused to name the company that developed it.

Charlie Paglee also warned of the fact that licensing the Skype-alike node protocol to rival companies could take Skype down, provided its contenders develop better software.

The Skype ptp VoIP network, was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the creators of KaZaA, and has recently been in the news for the introduction of global internet calling and live interpreters for over 150 languages, as well as its patent dispute with Net2Phone.

The main difference between Skype and other VoIP clients is that it operates on a peer-to-peer model rather than the more traditional server-client model. The Skype user directory is entirely decentralized and distributed among the nodes in the network, which means the network can scale very easily to large sizes (currently just over 100 million users) without a complex and costly centralized infrastructure.