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If only someone would code this idea.

• Gaim
• Miranda
• EB-lite and Ayttm, which are two forks of EveryBuddy
• IM2

• Gaim
• Miranda
• EB-lite and Ayttm, which are two forks of EveryBuddy
• IM2

No. Miranda is by far the best on Windows.
But I run only Linux at home, so which ICQ client I'll use?
First I tried gaim, didn't like it's interface.
Then both forks of everybuddy: ayttm and eb-lite. Still unsatisfied.
I was missing a linux port of Miranda..

Then a non-geek friend of mine told me about SIM.
Still not perfect, but I found it to be better then the alternatives, and closer to the Miranda approach (plugin-based, and a lean interface).

I don't know, I thought this was one more of these clients.
Actually I have been using ICQ services for years, first with Everybuddy, then with Fire.

Here are some photos from Winchester College, UK: Here and one that I took, Here, and Here (colour corrected)

I guess not Everybuddy can please everyone!

Smart ass...

Wouldn't a standard *something* be nice?

Well, GAIM is intended as a one-stop program for instant messaging networks. You can set it up with all your IM accounts and check in just that one place for any attempts to contact you. EveryBuddy is another such program.

I use BitlBee, which also does multiple instant messaging protocols, but it presents itself as an IRC server, so I can connect to it with my IRC client and have instant messaging sitting right next to the IRC channels I normally follow. (It also lets me live in text mode. I couldn't find any multiprotocol character-mode IM clients that I really liked, but I do like my IRC client.)

I have reported GPL violations to RMS, and he simply asked me to go to the program authors. Specifically, the codebase for Indiatimes Messenger contained some GPL'ed code from Everybuddy (now Ayttm). I reported this to the authors of Everybuddy, but they didn't seem to care beyond a point. After that, I've seen so many license violations, GPL and otherwise.

Thus, in practice, the GPL is not a strong instrument. Personally, I've come to believe that either I'll go for a closed-source license for my programs, or I'll go for something like BSD.

You dirty lying /.ers - YOU ALL ARE RUNNING AOL!

Check it out. here

There's yet another OpenSource IM client that can do AIM, MSN, ICQ, Jabber, and Yahoo. EveryBuddy. It's the one I've been using for a while not. Not quite as good as Trillian, but it runs on my Linux OS. When I load into windows to play games, I use Trillian. I haven't tried Trillian Pro yet, only because I've yet to download it. In any case, Everybuddy has been my choice IM prog for as long as I've used linux. Which, isn't too long, unfortunately.
That's my opinion and I'm stickin to it!

Running trillian on wine seems to me like an awful lot of overhead. I use everybuddy on my linux systems. It doesn't have a fancy skin-laden UI, but it does the job nicely. (I didn't like gaim because the interface annoyed me.)

To be honest, this isn't only a "single-vendor-solution" in instant messaging. There's programs out there like EveryBuddy and Gaim that have the same features, but for Linux instead of windows. I use Gaim personally. (with plugins for Yahoo, MSN and Jabber) EveryBuddy was a bit unstable last I tried it, but that was a long while ago so it's probably better now. But in any case, there still are choices if you want a program that has the ability to use multiple protocols.

And believe it or not, AOL DID try and keep competiting IM programs off of their networks. For a while there, Gaim was releasing a new version literally every 2 or 3 days because AOL kept changing their server protocol and making it incompatable with non-aol clients. Which was annoying because it would disconnect me and tell me to use AOL's "fully featured" Linux version of AIM, which had less features than Gaim did. Eventually I think that they just got tired of changing their protocol literally every few days, and just gave it up. After all, even if AOL's Oscar protocol changed, people could still get on their network with the TOC protocol, even though that didn't have as many features as the Oscar protocol did.

Flame me, mod me down if you will, but I think that people here might be more interested in everybuddy, which not only works under Linux, MacOS X and BSD, but is open-source as well.

I might also mention that everybuddy has been around longer, and they are working on a Java version as well.

Of course, I'm probably talking to deaf ears, seeing as how a large majority of slashdot readers are using Windows (*sigh*).

• Trillian itself is closed source and does not support Jabber, perhaps the open IM protocol with the best chance of "making it."
• Ever notice what happens when there's an anti-M$ article posted on /.? Anti-M$ "geeks" come swarming out of the woodwork. Yet there've been more "Trillian is great" comments than comments mentioning, say, Gaim or EveryBuddy, true open source, multi-protocol IM clients (that do support Jabber, btw). Hmmm...

(/me wonders what all this says about the make-up of /.'s readership.)

Client side apps are already doing the job fairly well:

Everybuddy

There are others for the non-Linux crowd too. (Feel free to list a few... I'm busy at work.)

(And there's always Jabber.)

The only problem is the intentional changing of AIM, MSN protocols solely for the purpose of "breaking" third-party clients.

Download everybuddy for linux, does AOL, MSN, ICQ, and Yahoo messaging, all in one program.

EveryBuddy and Gaim are two alternative messaging clients that have access to the MSN chat system. I use to use Everybuddy but I prefer Gaim's interface now. Both are fully "skinnable" (using GTK themes) link Trillian is. There are plenty of alternatives to Microsoft's offering. MS's software would appear to make extensive use of scripting like most of their other products do, which does more bad than good with worms/viruses such as this one on the rounds. Gaim support perl scripting, but it's easy to disable it, and it's default state is disabled. I understand that most internet chat users probably don't realise that their software has this scripting ability. Maybe something needs done to make them aware of it and what it can (potentially) do. Then we might see less stories about people falling victim to these attacks. (hey!, stop laughing and saying they deserve it! that's not fair...)

If I decided to stop using that software, is that EULA still binding?

Some clauses in the EULA for AOL Instant Messenger 4.0 and later are labeled to "survive termination of this License." Because one of those terms said that I couldn't use third party software to access AOL's servers, I clicked "Disagree." My winbox still runs AIM 3.0, whose EULA doesn't have such restrictions.

If it is still binding, for how long?

In perpetuity, unless you believe in reincarnation.

Fact: EULAs can last longer than the copyright on the software (which is nearly perpetual anyway).

On the legit thing: point conceded.

AOL, however, is anti-competitive. And their business tactics are monopolistic. They just haven't been proven a monopoly. They may not actually be a monopoly, but they're close; and their actions IMO are monopolistic.

Ever installed a game that automatically (without asking) put links to sign you up w/ AOL on your desktop? I have kids and let me tell you: lots of kids games do this. That's not all AOL's fault, but they get in bed with these game companies and set this stuff up precisely to be anti-competitive. Additionally, some systems do come with AOL already on them. AOL has gotten into bed with many a PC dealer to make sure their software is pre-installed. Now, that doesn't mean you have to use AOL, but I can't tell you how many DeLLs our company has purchased with an "AOL Adapter" already installed in their network settings...if you catch my drift.

And, while CompuServe made some bone-headed moves of their own, AOL certainly made some anti-competitive moves in that battle before buying and killing them.

And get this, I've installed Windows 95/98 and told it NOT to install the Online Services, but AOL is still there. Again, not that that's all AOL's doing, but they WANT it that way.

One definition of business is "risk-taking." And one key principle of doing business is to eliminate risk. All businesses do it and they are all inherently anti-competitive just as AOL is. But AOL/TW owns a significant enough portion of the Internet as to be borderline monopolistic. They are the largest ISP in the world, IIRC. They only agreed with Earthlink (an equally anti-competitive company) on terms that are basically designed to guarantee the two of them continued profits while blocking out every smaller ISP on the planet.

Lastly, I will give you no crap about who uses AIM. I've never tried Trillian...but on occassion I have messed with everybuddy.

Well, there's always Everybuddy, which I used for a while. I never used the non-AIM services much though, so these days I've reverted to Gaim. It has support for ICQ and other protocols (MSN, Jabber, IRC, Zephyr, ..?), but I've never tried it myself.

Daniel

I am now the maintainer of Everybuddy but it was not always so.

The previous maintainer was a man called Torrey Searle, and he was also one of the people who have helped with GAIM (our projects are very intertwined, I really should write a history some day). The way is worked for us was something like this.

Torrey was like your selfs way too busy to keep up work on the project, I was always working away, reporting bugs and such, as I seemed like the most active devel on the project it must have seemed to him that I was the logical choice. The story goes pritty much the same with GAIM incase anyone was wondering.

However, in your case there are no other active devels, but I am sure that this /. apperence will help with that, then you will be able to choose who will take the project in the direction you want it to go.

Also in my case, Torrey looks in every so often and wakes me up, he has moved a lot closer to me as well (he used to be in the US, he has now moved to Europe, and I live in the UK) so we are planning to meet up some time soon, so I am sure we will have a chat about eb then.

The last thing I would have to say is make sure you get along with this person, it would be very hard if you a few months down the line find you have given 'your baby' to someone who is nothing like you and you don't get along with.

Take care all - Robert Lazzurs

everybuddy and gaim both support multiple protocols within one program.

This is my first attempt to submit a patch to a GPL project, but I've been a programmer for more than 20 years. It doesn't give me a good first impression of how the open source community works. I guess I'll keep applying my patch manually every time a new release comes out ... :-(

I would never use hotmail in a regular basis. I only have an account in order to use MSN messenger (I use Everybuddy, not the damn MS client), because there are people i can't convince to use something better. Yet, I'd qualify hotmail as unusable; it's slow, bloated, ugly, gets in your way with so many damned little messages (it's so microsoft), and to top it off, the account receives an average of 50 spams a day. And NOBODY has that address. The only explanation: those mofos sell their addresses to spammers.

well I dunno, but I opened a hotmail account just so that I could use msn messenger (altough with an alternative client, everybuddy). I didn't give my hotmail address to anyone. And still, it gets an average of 80 spams a week. Now, that's what I call privacy. Luckily, since I don't get anything important on that account, I can just delete everything every week. heh.

Attempting to code MSN features for everybuddy (blatant plug) was rather hard with no MSN...oh well, back to bughunting =)

43rd Law of Computing:

I tend to believe a product does not ship until it is finished, I put out beta versions, but a stable version is not going to go out until the product is rock solid stable, yea, we can miss bugs, beta should take care of that, any more we get done asap, on that version, not wait until the next stable version.

Take care - Robert Lazzurs, new Everybuddy maintainer

Resources are not the issue, it is the banner ad's thing prob, or the fact that they just don't want you using OSCAR, they have been very nice in giving us TOC, I think we should say thanks by using TOC and not by saying fsck you and using OSCAR.

cat /dev/brain > slashdot

Take care - Robert Lazzurs, Everybuddy Maintainer

Ok, yea, is would be nice if the let us access OSCAR, but they are not, so boopah, they get to, at least they have given us OSCAR which provides us with a way to chat to AIM users, that is a lot more than MSN/Yahoo and ICQ have done.

As for TOC not being powerful enough, eh, it is IM, you can message people and see that people are online/offline/away, what more do you need. That is like complaining that your e-mail server will not let you send HTML e-mail!

As for this being illegal, I am not sure about the US, but he in the UK it would be, you are accessing their servers and using that servers services without consent, that is illegal, yea, they gave us toc to access oscar, we have right to access toc, this does not allow us to access the oscar machine directly though!

Plug time, if you want a chat client that you can rely on and that uses the wonderful open source service, Jabber and that will let you access MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and Zephyr then visit the Everybuddy website.

Take care - Robert Lazzurs - Everybuddy Maintainer

...but nothing more. Really, it's a neat idea, encrypted IMs would be great in particular, but the damn thing just doesn't work in my experience. Just give me a win32 port of EveryBudy so I can use it on my work machine as well as my Linux box at home.

You might try using a client such as Everybuddy. I too find it to be somewhat of a pain that there are so many different systems used by those I wish to communicate with. With EB however, I can talk to just about anyone, (AIM, ICQ, jabber, MSN, Yahoo, and probably others as well), though those without the other servers can't necessarily talk to each other.

A unified messaging protocol would be useful, but until then, we have to settle for unified clients.

everybuddy seems to be pretty stable these days. It fills the need for me at the moment.

The correct URL is probobly http://www.everybuddy.com.

Oops. You're right.

Thanks,
Andrew

The correct URL is probobly http://www.everybuddy.com.

1. There's actually more then just Pow Wow left
   Did you forget to pay the typo tax, Hemos? ;-)
   
2. Well, at least this means Everybuddy won't need some new "driver" for newer services.
   Except if AOL/MSN, etc. just decide to update their protocols to force the public to upgrade towards their tools...

We were going to use Jabber on a project I'm working on as part of the application. We've now decided against that until the clients become more stable and more usable.

Everybuddy is an instant messaging client for Linux which can connect to not only AOL's toc.oscar.aol.com server, but to ICQ, Yahoo!, and MSN's chat services all at once. It displays very nice status information, allows multiple accounts to be logged on at once, can use ispell to help correct typos in a non-intrusive way, and will log all conversations by Contact name. This means you can talk to "Natalie" on AOL and later on ICQ, then either use the view log function to read past conversations or grep the log file for a specific term if need be. The latest version has other great features, such as assigning sounds or a command to be performed when a contact name comes or goes offline. It comes with sound support, has a very nice look and feel, and is IMHO the best choice in IM clients for linux at this time.

Personally I would like to see Everybuddy ported to Win32, it seems like a great program. Hopefully, using the standard Win32 GUI API calls instead of custom or GTK ones, especially since Whistler will feature its own skinning method, and afaik, GTK for Windows is not that stable (or popular, and who needs more libraries?).

I agree; I want that too.

Until then, I'm using EveryBuddy. In fact, it looks like they have a new release out...

It isn't perfect; it's more like sox. It's the swiss-army knife of IM clients.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

The AIM 4.x license agreement states, in effect, `By installing this software, you agree to the terms. ... You may not use client software not approved by AOL Inc. on AOL's AIM servers.' This is why I use AIM 2.1 (the fastest Win32 AIM client that AOL ever made) on my Windows 98 partition, alongside Everybuddy. I know there's Jabber, but I found its AIM gateway to be a bit unreliable.

Ah yes, the typical "AIM sucks, use ICQ" response to an article like this. Of course, by now you must know that ICQ is owned by none other than AOL, and that the company is planning on merging the services. (Don't believe me? Download AIM 4.3, and log in using your UIN and password.)

Furthermore, ICQ's security is pathetic. Messages are sent person-to-person directly, opening up unnecessary ports on your system. Your password is sent in plaintext (as opposed to AIM's brilliant method of XOR'ing it with "TicToc") so anyone with a sniffer could find it.

ICQ and AIM are supported in Everybuddy for Linux. Good app, with no ad banners or ugly "skins" or "wings" like Odigo.

AOL has already started putting (obvious) ads into ICQ. For an ad-free combination of all four of the messengers you named, try Everybuddy for Linux. Pretty decent.

Soon enough, IM'ing will be unified in some way. Remember around 10 years ago, when business people had five different e-mail addresses (AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, etc.) on their business cards? Same deal with IM'ing now. After all, Prodigy used to be the Only Game In Town in terms of modeming for home users, and look what happened to them.

Would ICQ's use of numbers to identify it's users conflict with AIM's use of screen names?

I'm sure AOL has some way around it. Maybe they will do something like Everybuddy to join the two services together? Or are they going to totally unify the service to it is transparent no matter what client you are using?

...but until that happens, and they release a Linux version without ads, there's always Everybuddy.

In any case, I'll always be in favor of a universal, free client; I haven't tried Jabber lately.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Haha, you're kidding, right? It's true that AOL members get spammed all the time with e-mail and ads, but I have almost never received spam in the years that I've been using AIM. ICQ, on the other hand, publishes your profile data on a web site, so that any halfway-intelligent person can write a script to check which User ID's are valid. There was a time when I would receive at least five or six "Check out this porn site!" messages a day on ICQ. Now I only receive that many per week.

ICQ is a piece of shit. Its official clients are buggy, feature-bloated, and even less standards-compliant than AOL's software. The only reason I use it is because I have some friends who still insist on using it. Everybuddy manages to trim most of the fat, fortunately.

AFAIK, there are two AIM protocols... There is TOC which was the original protocol and was later open-sourced so that other people could write clients (like AOL's old Tk client). Then there is OSCAR, which is the better protocol that has more features, but has no docs behind it.

Reportedly, AOL has been talking about closing their TOC servers for a while now, and my guess is that they finally did that. Clients which use OSCAR (this includes everybuddy) are unaffected.

There's more info in the Everybuddy FAQ.

Please note that the above "facts" are all based on heresay and conjecture.

I concur - I have been using Everybuddy for quite a few months, and have had no troubles with it. It's fast, and friendly, and it checks spelling.=)

The thing is - I have some friends on Yahoo, and some on ICQ. The fact that you can talk to them all with one program (and people who use AIM and M$ IM, which I have never used), it's fanstastic. Add to the fact that it's free (as in speech) makes it even better.

so, check it out - http://www.everybuddy.com

I use Everybuddy. I've been reading the development list for a while and I am convinced only good things are going to come from it. I mean come on, one program that does four protocols, or four programs that do one protocol. Let's do the math here people.
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"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"

Guess I can rm all of those ugly text-based versions of messenger now. Anyone know if this linux version support custom away messages? I know this was one of my biggest complaints with programs like everybuddy.