The success or failure of the $1.9bn acquisition of Skype by a group of venture capital investors rests on a key question, write Maija Palmer and David Gelles : How replaceable is the software that makes the internet telephony system run?
The code that is so vital to its functions is owned by a separate company, Joltid , a British Virgin Islands-domiciled company, founded and partially owned by Skype's founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. When Ebay bought Skype for $2.6bn in 2005, the rights to the Joltid software - called Global Index - were not part of the deal. Ebay only had a licence agreement to use the code.
