Wengo: where Skype Fails!

Well well…
Thanks to my friend Frank and his post I’ve found OpenWengo, a new Voip phone application!

“What is the news? There are a large number of Voip apps!” you should tell me.
Well, OpenWengo includes some functionalities that hit the target for the perfect application!

  • It is OPEN SOURCE
  • It uses SIP: the STANDARD for Voip

Only these two features let my think that this application could break into the run for the Best Voip software on market, being a hard competitor for Skype!
I was talking very well about Skype and I still do (I’va bought a Skype phone, so every phone call I will do from now on when I’ll be at home will be via Voip, not via Hated Telecom Italia), but the two main drawback of Skype is that the two OpenWengo features I’ve written are not available in Skype!

From a normal customer point of view this does not change a lot of things.
“Both are free… I can’t see the difference!”
Yes, but OpenWengo is OpenSource, so if you need you can look through its code, so you can work on it! You can also check that OpenWengo will NEVER do anything else but letting you phone all over the world! The difference is that Skype is like a computer completely locked: you can only see the case, but nothing more. Open Source let you check the inside: If you know how to do it you can change some parts, you can submit those changes and live happily, knowing that there are no spyware hidden inside! (I am not telling you that Skype has, but we will never know, because its source code is unavailable!!!)
“I do not know anything about this, why should I matter about it?”

This if Philosophy.
Open Source Philosophy!
You can follow it or you can rise your sholder!

“I do not know anything about Sip! Skype works well!”
take a look to my post about the Instant Messengers! I talked about the need to have a standard for the communications. If every web page uses its own standard we should have a different browser for every website. Standardization let you choose the best software. Skype is not standard! Sip is the Voip protocol, that’s all!

You should tell me that you don’t know about standards and coding, but when you are surfing the net with your Firefox and the page does not load because the only writing is “Sorry. Site developed for Internet Explorer Only!”, don’t you go crazy thinking:
Hey this is a Web Page! Why do you want me to use a shitty Browser?!?!?!?!?
This is the same idea!

In the end I can tell you that OpenWengo is not at the level of Skype (for now), but he has a large space for a big improvements. In the end I whish to be one of those who will help this software to grew bigger and bigger, waiting for its Outgoing and Incoming call Features (that are not present at the moment)!

Cheers!