Richard Stallman's personal site.

https://stallman.org

For current political commentary, see the daily political notes.

Spanish translation.

Reasons not to use Skype

Skype requires the use of a client program that is not free software; in other words, the users don't control it — it controls them.

A nonfree program denies users freedom, which is unjust in itself. Making the ethical issue sharper, for you to use Skype is to encourage someone else to use Skype, which means you're pressuring someone else to surrender freedom as well. This is plenty of reason to refuse to use Skype, but there are more reasons.

Skype refuses to say whether it can eavesdrop on calls. That almost certainly means it can do so.
Skype gave personal data about a Wikileaks supporter to another company without any legal obligation to do so.
Skype churns the meaning of preference settings, and gives its users a run-around when someone cheats them.
Microsoft has changed Skype to make it easier for states to snoop on users.
Skype messages are not encrypted for the whole trip: Microsoft can read them. And Microsoft does read them.
The author of the first article ended by bending over backwards to legitimize everything else that is wrong with Skype, such as the use of a nonfree client program, but you don't have to follow him in that.

What to use instead? The most obvious alternative is a long-distance phone card. They are quite cheap nowadays, and they work with any phone. There are also free programs you can use, such as GNU Ring , Linphone, Mumble , Jitsi and more.