Karaka™: Skype/XMPP Gateway

Karaka is a Skype/XMPP gateway that connects the Skype and XMPP clouds. It is a scalable distributed standards-compliant XMPP transport able to be hosted across a cluster of machines which bridges instant messaging and presence between a user’s Skype and XMPP (e.g., Jabber, Google Talk) accounts. It supports full presence and instant messaging exchange plus multi-user chat (“conference rooms”).

This product uses the Skype™ API but is not endorsed or certified by Skype.

Standards Compliant

Karaka implements XEP-0100 for gateway support, XEP-0045 for multi-user chats and XEP-0144 for roster exchange.

XEP-0045 Multi-User Chat: Skype multi-user chats are mapped to a limited subset of XMPP XEP-0045 Multi-User Chat: upon adding a third contact to an ongoing Skype chat, the gateway will promote the chat to a multi-user chat.
XEP-0100 Gateway interaction: Feature complete XEP-0100 support with the exception of the following:
- “delete contact” in either direction
- “edit registration”
XEP-0144 Roster Item Exchange: Skype Buddy lists are mapped to XMPP Rosters via a limited subset of XEP-0144 Roster Item Exchange: roster deletions are not supported.

Requirements

Karaka uses Python 2.4+ and its standard libraries with XMPP support via the PyXMPP libraries and Skype support via Skype4Py. It also requires access to an XMPP server for several component and user connections.

Integrating Karaka requires the overriding of a small API responsible for managing user credentials: Karaka does not impose any particular credential management system or encryption technology.

Open Source

Karaka is free to download and use under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2, hosted at Google Code: karaka.