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Keeping Non-Corporate Instant-Messaging Alive?
dc_cypher asks: "Soon after I read these two articles, I stumbled across a secure unified IM client powered by Bantu on a Sprint site. While many people are turning to electronic communications to enhance (and protect) their reachability in the midst of the recent terrorist activities, what can we do to keep these useful non-corporate alternatives from being legally and financially slaughtered, only to end up joining their file-sharing bretheren in the internet graveyard?"
I was forced out of ICQ since their servers now drop packets not coming from v7 clients and LICQ is definately not v7; hell I don't even think it's being developed anymore.
AOL is blocking non-proprietary clients and the others out there are too small to worry about... I've switched to Jabber (using the Psi client).
Why Jabber? Interoperability. I can connect to a dozen other IMs as necessary. Right now I'm "cheating" ICQ by using the AIM transport which seems to work alright. But the biggest reason I like Jabber is that I also have the server source, and have my own Jabber server for my company.
Sure there are only 2 people on it right now but that's the point -- It's totally decentralized. I can get a hold of any other jabber client by searching THEIR server. You don't need to be on the same server to communicate. Very cool.
Jabber has a few interesting transports too like IRC and email. If it doesn't have what you want, write it, as the spec is open and will stay that way.
I was avoiding Jabber for a long time for several reasons: the clients were all GTK or Java or BUTT UGLY, they were big big big, and petty much all the clients popped up new messages. That's a royal pain in the ass when you actually use your computer. Psi has the option to just raise the window but it took focus too. I helped hack Psi so that its "Raise window" didn't take focus which is exactly what the old ICQ and LICQ did. Perfect. I can type away at 100WPM and if a message comes in I don't end up spilling half the paragraph into the IM window. I can shrink it small like ICQ/LICQ. The Psi developer promises to try and add in global-key support so I can map alt-backspace to pull up the next message. That's all I need in an IM.
That's my solution for closed-source proprietary bullshit IM protocols: route around them. Jabber is a great way to do so becuase it's decentralized and totally open.