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AOL vs. Trillian
Trinition writes: "ZDNews is reporting that AOL is once again trying to shut out the competition. Trillian has been updated twice in the past 24 hours to work around the blocks AOL is throwing up to prevent the popular IM client from interoperating with the AOL Instant Messenger service. Will Cerulean Studios hold up better than those they follow in the footsteps of (i.e. Microsoft, AT&T and Jabber)?"
I'm not sure of the current status of the application, but AOL has been doing the same thing to the OS X application Fire (a multi network IM client). Ever since it's release it's been a game of AOL blocking and subsequent update "fixing" the block,
Seems to me that all this extra programming is wasted cycles that could be better used for additional features for applications.
This is one area where greed is holding back innovation in the IM market.
Trillian is a very nice client - we use it almost exclusively here at work, as it lets us keep in contact with people using multiple IM platforms, and also doesn't ram ads down our throats.
One interesting thing is that the new AIM blocks only seem to affect Trillian v0.7x - some of our users still using v0.6x are still working fine, whereas us early adopters are having to update rapidly.
Luckily, the newest (v0.721) build includes an auto update function, so keeping up to date is likely to be much easier in the future. Bear in mind that there's a limit to how much AOL can do to break the protocols, as they don't want to shut out all of their previous clients.
Personally I wish it hadn't gone that far. Better to stay under the radar.. But anyways.. trillian was cut off, unless you disabled secureIM. That only worked for a day though. Cerulean released a patch that disabled it automatically but the next day access was blocked again.
Someone though AOL was on a mission. He even showed a screen shot that showed the uninstall icon for AIM being a crossed out trillian icon. Too bad he didn't realize that that icon was some kind of bug, cuz my uninstall icon was a vncviewer icon. GO figure.
But the fix for that second day was to go back to an even older version of trillian. Now cerulean just released one that works now without having to go back to an older version.
Some people just seemed to jump the gun a little I think.
Then again.. maybe AOL does have it in for them. Either way the cerulean guys are doing a great job!
You crazy man? You piss off supahfly!
how the hell is it a monopoly? is MSN messenger just a figment of my imagination?
they spent R&D money developing AIM, testing it, promoting it, upgrading it, etc. why in the hell should they be forced to open it up to people who want to piggyback on it? that's total and utter bullshit, and one of the things i can't stand about the slashdot crowd. .
gotta have everything, who cares if they spent a chunk of change and man-hours working on it, i want it, so it should be free and everyone should be able to use it.
BilldaCat
1. They added an overlay protocol, TIC-TOC, to allow interoperability (although, very limited, and not kept up-to-date).
2. The FCC ordered them to demonstrate iteroperability. They chose their victim.. I mean, partner, to be some dot-com that is now bankrupt and defunct (nice loop-hole spotting, AOL!). I'm trying to find links on this to back this up, and I'll post them here when I find them (just couldn't let this go unanswered).
3. AOL accepts e-mail from non-AOL SMTP servers. These e-mails traverse the AOL network, tying up their resources, and ultimately being converted into some AOL format for display in AOL. Why don't they block that? Oh, because it adds value to AOL by allowing its users to interoperate with the rest of the world. The difference with IM is that AOL owns 90% of that world (ICQ & AOL), so they don't see any value added.
For the millionth time, AOL is not preventing 3rd party clients from interoperating with the AOL Instant Messenger system. What they are doing is preventing 3rd party clients from using OSCAR, which is AOL's "private" protocol for AIM. They're not touching TOC, which is the protocol which AOL makes available for 3rd party clients to use.
Sure, flame me because:
1) TOC doesn't have all the features of OSCAR
2) TOC (might) use more resources than OSCAR on AOL's side, so you're doing them a favor.
3) AOL's required by the court to let us play in their sandbox.
4) AOL's a big bully.
5) Information wants to be free, man!
If AOL wants to make a subset of the features available to 3rd party clients, it's their prerogative. They own the servers, they wrote the service, they pay for the people to maintain the servers. And if TOC uses more resources than OSCAR on AOL's servers (which is just a rumor, and not confirmed from anyone with any authority), that's AOL's business, not yours. And no, AOL is not required by any court to let 3rd party clients play with AIM. They're only required to make the "next generation" AIM available to 3rd parties.
If you use OSCAR to connect to AIM and you don't use AOL's clients to do it, you don't get to complain when they change OSCAR around, regardless of whether they're deliberately blocking someone or just making modifications to the protocol for something else. Use TOC, or use another IM service.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
The FCC ordered them to demonstrate iteroperability. They chose their victim.. I mean, partner, to be some dot-com that is now bankrupt and defunct (nice loop-hole spotting, AOL!). I'm trying to find links on this to back this up, and I'll post them here when I find them (just couldn't let this go unanswered).
Keep looking because you are wrong. Here is a link. The FCC only forces them to demonstrate interoperability of advanced IM services which includes Video conferencing and the such. Nothing was set about regular IM. Of course, this agreement lasts for only 5 years and can change at any time.
A corporation, AOL is.
A possible competitor, Trillian is not. Trillian does not "compete" with AIM, it complements it. With all the Trillian users out there, why should AOL stop access to them? It increases the number of people on AOL can talk to.
"...when a service unleashes software that hacks into our system, and endangers the security of our system, we stop it."
That's a load of crap. Trillian does not hack into their system, it connects to it just as an official client does. Just because Trillian "happens" to speak the same language doesn't mean it's illegal. Again, third party clients make life easier for the people on AIM -- after all, AOL wouldn't want them downloading, say, MSN and using that instead, right? Blocking third party clients does not help AOL, it just makes life more intersting for both sets of developers as well as making it more difficult for people to communicate.
While there is truth in that it *is* their system and it *is* their place to decide whether or not to take action, doing so is simply a dumb idea.
The main problem with AIM and Jabber is not the protocol, but AOL blocking the IP Address of Jabber's AIM transport. If it's moved to a new IP, it's usually blocked in a matter of only hours.
Apparently they notice when hundreds of client connections are coming off one IP Address, no problems.
Of course you can hide the ads in AIM by editing aim.odl and netwait.odl. Just remove the "load_ocm advert required" from aim.odl between the {}'s of on_group(5) and on_group(11). Do the same in netwait.odl. ;)
proton != antielectron
Can anyone explain to me how AOL is changing their protocol without breaking their own IM?
I don't work for AOL or CeruleanStudios, so what I'm stating here are my asumptions.
I think that the first thing that AOL did was to analyze the data. If they found a Trillian SecrureIM package, then disconnect the user. This is why disabling SecureIM solved the problem at first.
I'm not sure what happened in the second step, but one theory is that they started checking the version number submitted in the Authentication request(or something similar).
Right now, Trillian seems to be working (Version 0.721). However, I believe that AIM has a CRC capability. The server will send a CRC request to the client with an offset and a length argument. The client will CRC the number of bytes specified by length starting from the specified offset, and send back the result. If the CRC doesn't match, then disconnect the user. It would be very hard to reverse-engineer the CRC algorithm. I believe that this is how Jabber was stopped in the end.
You just summarily described Jabber.
Just my $.02...I use Trillian as well, specifically for the reason that another user stated above. I have friends that use Yahoo, some on MSN, lots on IM, and a few on ICQ.
ALSO, Trillian supports 128-bit end-to-end encryption (Blowfish) for the AOL and ICQ protocols, which is something that no one else does. I would think that the privacy freaks (myself included) would grab it just for that.
El riesgo vive siempre!
One of the best features IMHO is that Trillian provides 128-bit SSL style encryption OVER the AOL IM or ICQ system (to other Trillian clients).
I support the Trillian coders, and encourage others to do the same. I think it's deplorable the way AOL 'shifts' its attitude whenever it suits: When they wanted to expand their user base, and feared the big, scary 'internet', they integrated standard protocols etc into their closed dialup service. When they wanted to gain a foothold in the IM mindshare war, they allowed non-AOL users to use their IM service. Now that they ARE the leading IM service (and bought the #2), it's suddenly THEIR network, THEIR protocol; how dare you use a client that doesn't generate ad revenue for them?
The fact that they cater to the computer neophytes and Luddites only complicates the issue. Joe geek can download and learn any program he wants to so he can IM Grandma, but there's no way you're gonna get Grandma to try out a cool new IM system because AOL is Evil and throwing around its muscle.
When the AOL-Time-Warner-MegaCorp merger happened, I thought the forced opening of their networks might lead to other regulated use of systems in their control. I'm so naive.
m00.
Here's AOL's response to an open IM network:
http://aim.aol.com/openim/
I thought when Trillian 7.0 came out, that Cerulean was making an error in their policies toward AIM.
In version 6.x, Trillian did not have any non-AIM features for AIM chat windows. With the release of 7.0, Cerulean added secure 128 bit encryption to AIM connenctions between two Trillian users, and possibly other features. This of course required that two Trillian clients be able to identify each other as Trillian clients. Whatever mechanism was used to determine this could easily have been used to lock Trillian out of the AIM networks.
Atanamis
It's not true that they left ICQ alone. For a few months (starting from late September or early October 2001) it is impossible to talk reliably to official ICQ2001 users.
Only in late December with new ICQ clients such as ickle is this problem on Linux solved (on Windows and Mac you can use AOL/Mirabilis' official client).
Incidentally, running the Mac ICQ client now on my new iBook. I find it funny that Licq has already copied ICQ2000's history+message view, and Ickle as well, while MacICQ has not. Oh well, at least it has Text-to-Speech.
Michel
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
I helped spec another reasonably successful interoperable messenger: IndiaTimes, downloadable at http://messenger.indiatimes.com. Some of you may find this information of value: 1. IndiaTimes Messenger (developed by Geodesic: http://www.geodesic.org, the company I'm associated with) is the product we licensed to The Times Of India, India's largest newspaper - and, if they were to be believed, the world's no.2 English daily. It allows you to communicate with your AOL, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and IndiaTimes buddies through one small (1.5 MB) free download and simple interface. When I last checked an hour ago - AOL interconnectivity was still on. Further, the service is difficult to block as it is not server-based, but P2P client based. 2. In the last 3 months, over 1.1 million downloads of this messenger have taken place. In effect, it has perhaps 10% to 20% of the market for messenger users in India. Yahoo and MSN are other leaders here, and AOL is nearly absent in this market. 3. What is unique about this messenger vis a vis others out there: Trillium / Odigo etc, apart from being client-based is its cross communication capabilities. i.e. If I am on IndiaTimes, 'A' is on MSN, 'B' is on Yahoo, 'C' is on AOL and 'D' on ICQ, then A, B, C and D can talk with each other. Hence, my MSN buddy can talk to my AOL buddy can talk to my ICQ buddy. Something, that, to the best of my knowledge, no other messenger allows. Something, perhaps, of some coolness and value:) 4. As far as legal and other threats, we have reasonable research to believe that, despite all the noise, _no messenger company has ever taken an interoperable messenger company to court_. Ever. This may either be because of a desire to avoid a costly legal battle, or to avoid unfavourable publicity - or, more likely we think - because such a case would be thrown out of court. 5. There is enough precedent, we believe, to prove that your communication sent through a messenger is your property - not that of the messenger company's. So you have the right to have your property pass through whatever route you desire to reach its final destination. (The letter / post office analogy). Similarly, I, the receipient can choose to see a communication meant for me through whatever system I desire (roughly analogous to me having the freedom to read my Hotmail on any POP account). 6. Further, there are specific legal rulings specifically favouring interoperability - and even defending reverse engineering to ensure interoperability. One may not be wrong in predicting that there will be no legal cases, but further time-delaying tactics by AOL or others re-engineering their software to keep out the interoperables. My $0.02, Mahesh
Incorrect. The current jabber AIM-transport works on the basis of the server operators putting the AIM binaries somewhere the transport can see it. It then calculates checksums off ot that.
AOL has been blocking AIM and ICQ traffic from jabber servers simply by blocking their IP's.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
AOL bought ICQ (Mirabilis) years ago. In fact ICQ 2000 uses Oscar, the AIM protocol...