TechCrunch is reporting that the Skype protocol has been cracked.

This could be a very good thing. Skype’s finance model is derived from people buying credit for items such as a live incoming phone number in a given country (SkypeIn) or make phone calls to existing real telephone numbers (SkypeOut).

Therefore, I can’t see why (assuming their protocol and servers are secure) Skype shouldn’t now open up the protocol and allow third-party developers to develop clients of their own, or integrate Skype into popular multi-network IM/voice clients like Trillian.