Re: [orca-list] Skype for Linux

[Kyle <kyle4jesus gmail com>]

According to B. Henry:
> this is yet another reminder of how little respect
> Linux gets as a consumer, or end user OS.
Seriously, does anyone believe even now that MICROSOFT respects DESKTOP LINUX or 
its users? Microsoft is the single large multinational corporation that has been 
most responsible for the marketing that has marginalized the Linux desktop for 
many years, and "platinum member of the Linux Foundation" or not, this is not 
likely to change any time soon. In Microsoft's long-held view, Linux should be 
relegated to the data center and a small handful of freaky geekies and nothing 
more. Supporting Linux on the desktop would mean shooting themselves in the 
wallet, as it would be in their opinion an admission that our OS is superior to 
the OS that has been their cash cow for at least the past 25 years. This is but 
one explanation for why their Skype application has been stuck in the dark ages 
of 32-bit computing and qt5 and bluez4 up to now, and why Microsoft Office, 
their other major cash cow, even though it gives the nod to Apple, still has no 
support on Linux to this day. There may be other internal factors at play, but 
this is the main one. They're cimply not gonna give up that cash flow they get 
from the sale of millions upon millions of Windows licenses, especially now that 
they have a subscription model that allows them to keep getting cash from every 
single user each year. This is why we see so much commercial advertising and 
marketing of their latest, greatest and shiniest, which pretty much just copies 
GNOME and KDE. So no, they're not gonna care about accessibility, especially on 
Linux, and they will continue to give any Linux Skype client moving forward 
second class status if they give it anything at all. And no, they're most likely 
not going to improve accessibility on their website either, because the only 
reason they have the website at all is because several other voice and video 
platforms, including but not limited to Google Hangouts and appear.in, were 
already doing the whole WebRTC thing, so they felt they had to develop a cute 
little website that they claim uses WebRTC just to say they're doing it too. 
It's long past time to start using a better alternative, many of which have been 
available for some time, and stop giving Microsoft any further publicity or data 
that they can sell to government spy agencies in China, the USA and other 
countries, as they have been caught doing on a number of occasions.
Sent from my firm foundation