Yahoo Messenger Blocks Outside IM Clients

jj00 writes "CNET News is reporting that Yahoo has started blocking 3rd party Messenger clients from their service. The article is about Trillian, but I have noticed that my gaim client hasn't been working for the past few days." As reported earlier.

Comments

nah

[Anonymous Coward]

More like "great way to stop giving the service away for free to freeloaders who generate no ad revenue" am i rite?

Re:nah

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I do. They sure give me strange looks though.

Re:nah

[Xuli]

Was Yahoo not one of the founding members of the IMUnified group, whose sole purpose was to unify with goliaths such as MSFT to fight the tyranny of AOL? Aforementioned tyranny being comprised of AOL blocking outise clients from accessing their users.

What goes around comes around. Out of protest I am planning to use my AOL IM exclusively indefinitely unitil this is solved.

Starting with a work-related mandate to use Yahoo's IM service, I've since become quite a "Sticky" Yahoo visitor. My calendar is linked with their service, I forward a number of mail addresses there - I generate them money!

How, you ask? I am given, at the least (counting calendar, email, and news) three opportunities per visit to interact with Yahoo's advertisers and sponsors. This is a direct result of being a Yahoo IM user, and discovering how their other services integrated with their messaging client. While I cannot comment on MSN, and I don't dream of endorsing AOL for myriad reasons, I feel that Yahoo's services were robust enough to keep a technically demanding user such as myself attracted to the brand. In interacting with memebers of Yahoo's chat community, it seems to be the case that moderate to heavy users of it's chat/IM service also quickly adopt other Yahoo services. This equates to more unique pageviews per day from IM/chat users than off-the-street users and perusers. Yahoo IM users, on average, tend to be loyal out of necessity - not necessity becasue they are in any way indentured to format, design or interoperability to Yahoo, but becasue things "just work."

This move, to isolate IM users who may be using a different client (is it even reasonable to assume users will be happy with just one?) services is tragic. Yahoo has clearly missed the point that IM users are not IM users alone, but rather comprise some of the best audiences for exposure to their ads, and therefore, a direct path to revenues.

This move, to block users who've already made a conscious choice to use other Yahoo services is a faux pas, to say the least.

Re:nah

[hetta]

Actually, the linux client doesn't have any ads. Here: YIM for *nix

Re:nah

[Peyna]

If you read the news.com article cited further up you'll realize that Yahoo states they have every intent with working with 3rd-party clients, and that they fully support a standards initiative.

They're basically just saying "Hey, we're putting this upgrade out there, and it's probably gonna break your client. You might want to talk to us and we'll tell you how to fix it."

Re:nah

[Mattb90]

Well, I would say that IMunified has fallen by the wayside a bit. Try heading to IMunified.org (where its official website once was) and you'll get this: - a symbol that MS, Yahoo and the others have probably lost interest in the scheme.

Re:nah

[Grumpendorfer]

Right, and OJ is hard at work looking for the real killer(s)...

Re:nah

[Macgruder]

You have a point.

But the question I have is this:

Is Yahoo! (and other IM servers) cutting off their own feet but blocking access to Trillian?

I use Trillian extensively, and have been doing so for two year. So do all of my friends. 55-60 people.

But if Yahoo! blocks Trillian, we'll just switch to another service. Most often I use MSN, but I can easily switch to ICQ or AOL if MSN starts blocking Trillian.

So, there's 50 users that Yahoo! lost, how many more times will this scenario be duplicated across the planet?

I think Yahoo! just made the same error other net services vendors (and the RIAA) made: They blocked usuage of their product by 'unathorized' (in their eyes) users. They are obviously hoping that people will start using Y! (or buy the CD, in the case of RIAA). But without giving the users a usable, convenient, and value-added service, users will just go someplace else. In the case of Y!, I'll drop it. CD's, I'll listen to what's on the radio, or net-cast, or listen to the MP3s I have.

They don't gain my loyalty, unless they offer a real alternative.

ex.

Y!: We don't want you to use their program for our service. It costs us money to maintain it, and when you don't use our program, we don't get any of it back.

User: But this program is easy to use, comes wit lots of neat features, and deosn't suck up a huge amount of memory or CPU cycles.

Y!: AH, but here's our new program. Y!+ for all the other features, and Y! Lite for just the bare bones. We'll even use plug-ins so you can have JUST the features you want.

User: Gee, thanks Y!. I'll use it, and be loyal forever!

Re:nah

[darien]

So, there's 50 users that Yahoo! lost, how many more times will this scenario be duplicated across the planet?

Yes, but if these people are using Trillian, they weren't the sort of users Yahoo! wants anyway. They were using the service, but not generating any revenue to pay for it (principally by not looking at ads). Of course, Trillian users boosted Y!'s market share, and their presence made it a more attractive choice to new users, some of whom would use the official client, see the ads and generate revenue. But Y! seems to have concluded that letting Trillian users use their network for free doesn't attract enough new users of the official client to be cost-effective; so why would they encourage it?

I think Y! know exactly what they're doing. Depending on your long-term strategy, it can be better to have forty thousand customers making you a tiny profit than forty million who cost you money.

Re:nah

[aminorex]

Methinks you've been watching too much TV.
The function of the police is not to protect
you. That is your responsibility. The function
of the police is to whack people down.

Windows Messenger has update also

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Microsloths IM as well and it required me to download an update when I logged on tonight, and it wouldn't let me on without updating... and it probably sent back the illegal CD key I use for my copy of XP. OOPS did I say that!?

Re:Windows Messenger has update also

[Anonymous Coward]

The CD key isn't breaking copyright law. The copy of XP might be. Using a non-original key with a legitimate copy of XP may still be illegal due to the DMCA (circumvention of copyprotection), but in many countries using a fake key to activate a legitimate copy of a program is perfectly legal.

Re:Windows Messenger has update also

[Afrosheen]

You and millions of others are probably half the reasons worms spread so fast. Microsoft thought they were being clever by having a real serial checker built into sp1 but sp1 fixed alot of holes. Without sp1 other patches don't want to install from Microsoft's update site (not to say that they WON'T but the site doesn't like you skipping it first).

So basically Microsoft helps prevent piracy (sorta, any keygen and serial changer can work miracles) while at the same time ensuring the spread of 0wn3d machines. Good job guys, quality work.

Re:Windows Messenger has update also

[NickFortune]

Yep - that's why I put a lock on my front door- to help prevent crime. A lot of people say that I'm just worried about my stuff being ripped off, but that's not true! I am passionately committed to whole crime prevetion thing.

Trouble is, Microsoft want to be the ones that put the lock on my house. For my protection, obviously. And they'll keep a copy just in case. And so they can let themselves whenever they want to. Just to check my security. And make sure I've not pinched anything. And maybe redecorate if they feel like it.

And if they sometimes take stuff away, well that's ok because it really all belongs to them anyway. All I do is pay for it, it says so on the licence.

And come the advent of Palladium, if I want to get in myself, all I'll have to do is ask them...

Yeah, good job boys. Quality work.

AIM started it

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when Windows Messenger came out? It could connect to AIM's network, and had AOL allowed it, it's likely Windows Messenger would've destroyed their marketshare. Afterall, why use AIM to just to talk to one network when you can use Windows Messenger to talk to two? So, AOL cut them off. MS worked around it, AOL cut them off, and so on. Eventually, they reach some sort of agreement, and they don't talk to each other.

Please find a backdoor for Y! and MSN!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, I hope they find a backdoor, because I can't use either my trillian on windows and gaim on linux with yahoo anymore.
I wouldn't mind using the original Yahoo! client, however, I also have ICQ, MSN and AIM accounts that I run at the same time, so having four different big apps running at the same time is just not nice, takes space, cpu, memory and their interfaces are bloated and irrelevant for the thing I want to do: simple IM.
This is why, I have to use Trillian or Gaim: simplicty, small interfaces, easy to have all contacts in the same place.
If Yahoo or anyone else made their client to support all 4 protocols, I wouldn't have a problem using one of them instead of trillian or gaim. But until they do, I really need an integrated solution, not a mess on my desktop!

Their Network

[ultrabot]

Well, it's their network so they can block anyone they want.

If you don't like their rules (I don't), why don't create a free/open/documented IM network? Make it better than the commercial offerings, and people will come.

How's Jabber doing these days, anyway?

Re:Their Network

[AftanGustur]

Make it better than the commercial offerings, and people will come

Welcome stranger, we hope your space travel to our planet has ben a pleasant one.

Unfortunately, on our planet, things are not as simple as on yours. Here on Earth, companies don't hesitade to abuse their market position or enourmous wealth to block normal competition.

It doesn't matter if you create the best mousetrap, as long as Micro$traps controls the market you will get nowhere. You can't even advertise your new trap, since Micro$traps will threaten the magazines to stop advertising in their paper if yours will get printed.

Welcome to earth, we hope you will have a pleasant visit.

Re:Their Network

[ultrabot]

Here on Earth, companies don't hesitade to abuse their market position or enourmous wealth to block normal competition.

So we should just crawl into a hole and die?

IM is not owned by any company yet, let alone MSFT. An Open alternative has a good position to beat the proprietary opposition, especially as it is quite divided already. Open Standards are the "in" thing right now.

Wouldn't it be fabulous if various Corporate platforms (Notes, etc.) chose to use the Jabber protocol as the IM solution? Then everyone would be running Jabber clients already, and communicating with friends would be a natural extension of that activity. I took a look at the Jabber page, inspired by this article, and saw that they are co-operating with IETF to standardize the protocol... and therein lies the future.

Re:Their Network

[slux]

Jabber's doing great. The Jabber software foundation recently issued a press release stating that Jabber has now passed ICQ in popularity.

Also, they're on their way to becoming an actual internet standard.

The last obstacles are file transfer (should be addressed soon) and actually getting people to migrate. When all your friends are on Yahoo for example, it's not that easy to switch. The gateways are supposed to help the problem, but of course right now the Jabber Yahoo gateway is not functioning either.

Re:Their Network

[DrEldarion]

Most people are on those networks because one person initially went on. Then his friends went on because he was on. Then their frends went on because they were on, etc... and now nobody wants to change because all their friends use that network.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:Their Network

[Anonymous Coward]

Jabber has now passed ICQ in popularity

Wow! That's amazing!

Do you think that someday it will be even more popular than Gopher?

Or -- maybe even -- more popular than Fingerd?

Re:Their Network

[Motherfucking Shit]

It doesn't matter if you create the best mousetrap, as long as Micro$traps controls the market you will get nowhere. You can't even advertise your new trap, since Micro$traps will threaten the magazines to stop advertising in their paper if yours will get printed.

::cough:: bullshit ::cough::

Wired plugged two independent IM apps, Trillian included, giving both of them positive reviews. Doth not Microsoft advertise in Wired? I don't have the print copy of that issue but I'd be seriously surprised if there was not a Microsoft advert in it.

Where does KaZaA advertise? That's right, nowhere; they created a product that people like (as junky as it may be), so people use it, and tell their friends. When was the last time you were browsing a trade magazine and saw a full-page color ad for Apache? That's what I thought. Yet Apache is everywhere, even on Windows, even with numerous competitors.

Open source/free/alternative software doesn't need to advertise. When it's good, its user base will take care of promotion and evangelizing.

All that said, I don't really see any sort of open source IM initiative taking over. When it comes to IM, the fact is that people want to be on the same network as most or all of their friends. That means a centralized network (or at least a 100% interoperable collection of smaller networks), and that means a lot of bandwidth. Unless IBM, or Sun, or Redhat, or Google decide to pour a few spare millions into operating the infrastructure to power an open IM network, I don't see any "OSS friendly" company ever dominating the IM space.

Re:Their Network

[I(rispee_I(reme]

The biggest problem with decentralized instant messenging is implementing buddy lists.
Almost every peer2peer program uses some degree of centralization, excepting freenet and the original gnutella 0.4 (0.6 and later added ultrapeer support). Those networks which are completely decentralized are characterized by slow, unreliable searches, due to having to check every peer on the network for bootleg.mp3 (for example).
Now, this problem can conceivably be worked around as long as you're searching for bootleg.mp3, since one copy's as good as any other, but when you transfer the decentralized architecture over to Instant Messaging, and instead of looking for that mp3, you're looking for your chat buddy (IM_Pal, for example), one IM_Pal is not as good as another.
So, for now, decentralized chat is a possibility, while decentralized IM is not, due to the buddy list which begs for a central authority to maintain it... At least as far as I know.

Lies

[Henry V .009]

This may or may not be a reasonable business decision, but do they really have to flat out lie to their customers?

"If this has affected the way in which third parties interact with our service, it is merely a byproduct of our efforts to implement preventative measures to protect our users from potential spammers," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said.

Who the hell decided that it was okay to to treat all your customers like I treat my retarded cousin Larry? I hope that they understand that a lot of us know and resent it when we are being lied to.

Re:Lies

[yRabbit]

Many "potential spammers" can, of course, just use their official clients. They could, if they wanted, take the time to send identical messages to people one at a time.

If they're only concerned about spammers, and third-party clients allow you to spam, they just need to implement some anti-spam measures on the server side of things (read: Block users from sending too many messages out in some intelligent manner or another), not block out many people who'd like to talk to others on their network but use a client they might trust or like more.
It sounds to me like they must not care about third party clients.. Why not simply tell the truth in their statement?

Re:Lies

[Concerned Onlooker]

"If this has affected the way in which third parties interact with our service, it is merely a byproduct of our efforts to implement preventative measures to protect our users from potential spammers," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said.

Well, irregardless she shouldn't have used the word "preventative." Don't misunderestimate me, I'm sure it gives the sentence an impactful feeling but it seemed unnecessary.

Re:Lies

[Awptimus Prime]

Apparently you don't use the Yahoo! IM service. It's to the point I keep the client on a hidden virtual desktop since I don't like my boss walking by and seeing an IM from S3XXEEmama69 inviting me to view her webcam for $3.99/minute.

Spam and abuse on Yahoo! chat has been out of control for years. Plus, it's not like any corporate entity can tell the full truth about anything these days. Instead of a few people going "OH HEEEEY! What about them ads you want me to see??", they simply address the most beneficial points to the public. That's because the masses can be a whiney, time consuming waste of time and resource if you give them too much information.

Personally, I'd rather see Yahoo! make revenue off their small ads and keep their email and IM services free.

As I read this thread, I find no end to my disappointment in people's attitude towards a free service trying to get back a little of what they've given you. I think this model should be praised for even existing. Think about it. Don't you remember the days before you broadband connections? You know, back when people silently got nickeled and dimed to death over any little perk or service for analog phone service (think $5.95/mo for CallerID!). Now you get the world at your finger tips, for free, but yet whine endlessly when they would like to show you and advertisement in an attempt to run their business.

If half the people on this website got outside on occasion, they'd find there's a lot more to get upset about in the marketing industry than small non-popping up ads in an IM.

Chew on these:

- Gas stations that you can't even see in the windows because they are completely covered with beer, cigarette, and drink ads.

- Billboards with ~1100 watts worth of lights blanket our cities and dot our countryside.

- 6-10 minutes of TV commercials every 30 minutes. The same obnoxious commercials every break.

- MTV

- Spam

- Advertising in public school campuses.

- Companies scheming to put billboards in space.

It's not like the people complaining are even being forced into using a service at all. Everyone can go back to IRC and deal with the service level of a free realtime chat network. You know, smurfers, script kiddies, etc.

I got nothing, so I'll be quiet now. ;-)

They're cutting their own throats

[vaylen]

Most people have been using Trillian for so long that they will simply ask their friends to use ICQ or MSN so they can stay on their contact lists. In the end this will just result in fewer people using Yahoo messenger.

In a related story, NBC has decided to make their broadcast signal only work on a G.E. television. Brilliant move boys!

Re:They're cutting their own throats

[MoonFog]

After October 15 MSN access will also be restricted
We'll have to wait and see if ICQ will do the same thing eventually

Re:why is this even an issue?

[MoonFog]

I mean anyone who uses a proprietary network to do communication on is taking some pretty big chances...
Why is this ? The regular user wouldn't recognize code if I hit him in the head with it. To him it doesn't matter if his chatting protocol is open source or not, he just wants to reach his those on his buddy list.

The lesson to be learned here

[lateralus]

Never trust a corporation with anything you value or at least with proper constraints over that corporation.

If you want to feel safe that you can use your service tomorrow too then run jabber or any other service that you can run a server for if your main server stops.

Serves people right for trusting closed systems.

Re:The lesson to be learned here

[anonymous loser]

Never trust a corporation with anything you value or at least with proper constraints over that corporation.

I use Yahoo! Messenger and haven't experienced any problems whatsoever related to this. In fact there are a couple of new features with this newest version that I'm eager to try out. Why should I be concerned if some unendorsed 3rd party application no longer works because Yahoo decided to change the way their network or protocol functions? My client still works fine; it's just too bad if Trillian (whose newest beta version still works, BTW) or some other 3rd party meta-IM client gets borked along with all the spammers.

Serves people right for trusting closed systems.

It serves who right, exactly? Yahoo customers didn't experience any problems. You must mean the 3rd-party clients and spambots leeching on Yahoo's networks, because they are the only ones affected AFAIK.

Re:The lesson to be learned here

[jrepin]

Couldn't agree more. Jabber is the future. We need open standards and freedom to deploy our own servers for open protocols. Just like wth e-mail. Imagine what a sucky world it would be if there were so many incompatible and propriatery e-mail standards owned by companies. Just scarry.

Jabber on people!

Well..

[methangel]

I actually prefer the official Windows clients to the all-services-in-one packages. Memory is really not an issue these days either, considering how cheap it is.

But yeah, it's their service that they freely offer, they are logically allowed to control who accesses it. I do not disagree at all.

Re:Well..

[deinol]

Post a:

Memory is really not an issue these days either, considering how cheap it is.

I work at a store that also repairs computers. I can tell you that while memory is cheap, there are a lot of people who are still running older machines. People bring in Pentium I's and II's all the time. Even the occasional 486 shows up. Besides, once you have ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Kazaa, Weatherbug, Gator, Comet Cursors, Norton Anti-Virus, Mcaffee, Office quick start, Cox quick connect, etc, etc, etc, running, I've seen Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz machines that make a Duran 700Mhz machine look super fast.

Post b:

My client still works fine; it's just too bad if Trillian (whose newest beta version still works, BTW) or some other 3rd party meta-IM client gets boked along with all the spammers.

The point of being able to use Trillian is to have one client for multiple networks. I use Trillian so I don't have to care which network someone is on. I'm on all of them. A single uniform client, with a single interface for each.

I don't worry about losing connectivity to one network for a short while, all the people I really want to talk to have multiple types of accounts as well.

Beta Patch already released

[M3wThr33]

Cerulean Studios already fought AOL and won.
If you hoof it on over to Trillian's website and logging into the member's section, you can get the beta Yahoo-patch.

How's that for response time?

Re:Beta Patch already released

[CGP314]

Gaim is already working on a crack too.

Re:Beta Patch already released

[NuShrike]

I confirm this. Beta patch for post 2.0pro release works fine with "new" Yahoo.

Trillian beta still works

[koreth]

If you're a paying Trillian customer, you can download the beta of their next major release, which works just fine with the Yahoo! Messenger network even after this change. I believe they've said they'll port the protocol change back to the free version as well. I'm running the beta and haven't noticed any disruption of service.

Re:Trillian beta still works

[typobox43]

Whoa. The beta still works?! Here's a bit of background info... some you might know, some you might not. Trillian 2.0 was released back on September 10th. Trillian 2.0 RC3 had come out within the last 48 hours (can't remember exactly when). After RC3 came out, Yahoo started sending the YahooMessengerTeam upgrade notices that you might have seen. Because of this, the Trillian development team made a quick change in the final version just before they were going to release it. This pushed back the release a good two-three hours. Anyway, they updated the final to the latest protocol. The beta isn't on the latest protocol, and from what I remember seeing, it wasn't supposed to work at all after the "upgrades." However, if it really still works, I've got a lot of people who will like to know it.

I don't think it's meant as a block.

[typobox43]

I've been watching this situation as it developed... I'm a very.. avid Trillian user. I highly doubt that the sole purpose of this was to block alternative clients. Why would they give a two weeks' warning, when the Trillian developers especially are known for releasing connectivity patches right when the problem occurs? (Remember back when AIM blocked Trillian... February 2002? There were five patched versions of Trillian released within a three-week period. That seems to say that there's not much chance in keeping alternative clients out by simply changing the protocol. I consider the MSN deal a completely different one from the Yahoo issue. MSN has publicly announced that there will be licensing for their protocol - which is great by me. That ensurance that I'm using completely legal software is always a plus. Yahoo, on the other hand, is a different story. They've not really made much comment about alternative IM aside from the "byproduct" comment. They seem to really be avoiding the issue. My theory here is that they decided it was time to upgrade everything... maybe spammers were the driving force, maybe not. Then, someone noticed that it was causing these alternative clients to have fits. Was it a byproduct of their changes? Yes. Was it unwanted? No. I think this was simply a case of "accidental genius."

Re:why is this even an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone who uses a proprietary network to do communication on is taking some pretty big chances...

You mean like the the telephone system?

Yahoo say they're open to talking to 3rd parties

[kikibobo]

Check this story out from new.com.com.

Jumping to the conclusion that their intent is to block 3rd party clients is just wrong, according to this.

It sounds reasonable to occasionally force an upgrade, particularly in the interest of protecting privacy.

Re:GAIM, jabber too?

[kruntiform]

Of course Jabber is not affected. Why would it be? That is the beauty of Jabber and a good reason why everyone should be using it instead of closed IM protocols. (Good luck convincing anyone though!) If you have a Yahoo account which you log-in to from Gaim, though, you might want to clear the auto-login checkbox for that account for the time being as it won't work and it will just give an error. The Gaim people are working on a fix -- you can read the announcement on their web site. I imagine that any Yahoo gateways on Jabber servers would be broken too.

Re:ohh yeh...

[Eric Ass Raymond]

Maybe they want to stop freeloaders who do not contribute to the ad-revenues?

Why the hell do you expect that everything should be free?

Trillian wasn't merely blocked -

[nuckfuts]

it caused the program to crash. In many cases Trillian could not even start until automatic login to Yahoo! was edited out of an ini file.

Making money with open IMs

[ShadowDrake]

The obvious excuse for locking out third-party clients is to prevent getting by without seeing downloaded ads.

Why not merely develop a system that sends ads as messages-- like spammers do, but officially. Send one every x +/- y minutes of connect time, make up source accounts (or even force the account name to a friends-list member) to make filtering difficult.

Re:AIM Next?

[colinleroy]

MSN is not blocked. ayttm, eb-lite, gaim (in CVS) and some other clients already use MSNP8 or MSNP9.

Old news ?

[Krunch]

I've noticed that my Jabber client can't connect to Y! for some weeks now. Well, we still have AIM, ICQ and of course Jabber.

Jabber

[WindBourne]

I currently use kopete (and occaisionly gaim which has much better protocols) due to hating to use so many different programs.
Worse, teh MS version of yahoo is awesome while the linux version is at best the mistreated stepchild.
Due to all the hassle that is going on, it is time to move away from so many protocols and server. I am re-establishing jabber at home and at work. It is time to move away from being tied into politics amongst the monsters and simply take back control

When your rivals are better, block them

[mikeswi]

Yahoo may think this will cause 3rd party users to download the official client. I believe they are incorrect. People will just wait on Trillian to get back onto the network or they'll tell their other Trillian friends to switch to one of the other 3 networks it accesses.

I suppose since their software can't compete with their rivals' software on features and functionality, they're trying to compete on number of users. That's pretty stupid however, since AOL and MSN have that locked up.

Why not just friggin agree to a standard network that any client can access? Then they could concentrate on making the software good enough that people want to use it because they like it, not because they have 1 or 2 friends who refuse to use a different network? They could also concentrate on that secure, encrypted corporate version that AOL, Yahoo, and MSN all want to start selling to corporate buyers.

Ad Revenue?

[tarnin]

What ads? I use Yim at work and there are zero ads. The only ad that there is is a pop up screen when it starts that can be turned off in the options. No ads on the client itself like aim either. No hacking needed (eg. I'm not running DeadYim).

All this is is an update to their protocal that happened to break third party messengers. I looked for a license that you could purchace ala msn and couldnt find one. I believe that they will continue to allow third party messengers into their network.

Why is it just because they upgrade something and it breaks other programs that they didn't code people call out the wolves on them? Not all companies are M$ here. On the other side, not all companies are Opensource based and fully backwards compaible. In this case, Yahoo upgraded their core protocal and in doing that broke all backwards comptability. This, in my eyes, isn't some evil plot to get people to look at ads or get license money, it's just the way they do things.

Re:Ad Revenue?

[ajensen]

Why is it just because they upgrade something and it breaks other programs that they didn't code people call out the wolves on them?

Good point. I think that as IM users, we often forget that the "communicative" spirit behind instant messaging (unfortunately) isn't what keeps the services working. Someone has to foot the bill for bandwidth, equipment, equipment breakdown, and everything else. We the users tend to feel that if it interferes with our ability to communicate, then it is bad -- and we should call out the wolves, as you said.

See the big picture, people. Anything sponsored or operated by a company (a capitalistic entity) will have profit as its bottom line. That's not our fault, and it's not the company's fault. It's just The Way That They Are(TM).

Which article did you read?

[artemis67]

Coinciding with the upgrade, Yahoo said it would likely disable access to outside IM services such as Trillian. Yahoo set a deadline of Wednesday for its forced upgrade and its intention to disconnect Trillian.

This is most definitely an attempt on Yahoo's part to block third-party IM clients.

Nowhere in the article does it state that Yahoo still supports a standards initiative, or that it has any intent to work with third parties.

Re:Which article did you read?

[NemoX]

This quote really says it all. Kopete and Gaim are already working on a solution. You wont find either of those mentioned in the article, why? Because they don't CHARGE $$$ for people to use someone elses service, like Tillian does. Trillian is nothing but a leech that deserves to be shut down. That is why Microsoft only gave trillian access to its new MSN protocol after Trillian agreed to pay a fee.

I mean seriously, if you had a service you were providing for free/ad-ware, and some company added monthly costs to your bandwidth and cpu usage, and you received no money from them, yet they charged a fairly steep fee, wouldn't you be ticked off too?

BTW, Kopete has already released a fix for MSN, and both (Kopete and Gaim) are working on fixes for MSN and Yahoo! to be released soon.

Gaim from CVS works just fine

[Eye of the Frog]

I grabbed the latest Gaim files from CVS after the 24th, and I was back up and running with no problem at all. Thank you to all the Gaim developers for their hard work!

Re:Gaim from CVS works just fine

[soloport]

How can this be?

From the site:
You may have noticed that Yahoo has ceased working. The fix in 0.69 (of which (slightly broken) source packages are currently available) was not adaquate. We're working on the new authentication method now; hopefully it will be cracked soon.

Dated: September 26th, 2003 - 1:55PM EDT

Re:Why don't these services interconnect?

[ajensen]

If this were the case -- that is, they were interconnected -- I think that they would have a hard time advertising for their other services. For example, when a Yahoo! IM user logs on, Yahoo! has many opportunities to advertise their other services, such as searching, and so on.

The same goes for MSN and AOL. If they were interconnected, they would lose that leverage and lose the ability to draw people to their other (read: more profitable) internet services. People could pick any client they wanted to and still be able to talk to their friends and family. IM by itself is probably not a big money-making venture, so they will want to draw as much from it as possible while investing as little as possible.

As an open-source and standards advocate, I would love to see such an integrated network. However, I look at the business-related consequences for the existing networks, and I sigh... for I doubt we'll see it.

Re:GAIM, jabber too?

[Trejkaz]

That's going into how you define 'broken'. Jabber is a protocol, and could also refer to the Jabber server or clients, none of which are broken.

With respect to the Yahoo Transport (which is a separate part of the system, and often even runs as a separate process), yes, the Yahoo Transport is broken for connecting to Yahoo at the moment.

I've heard (second-hand) GAIM are working on a fix for their plugin, and Jabber's is based on GAIM's so its fix will follow shortly thereafter.

It's quite amusing that everyone was kicking up so much fuss about Microsoft's move, whereas it ends up being Yahoo who make the move with little warning.

Re:GAIM, jabber too?

[kruntiform]

You are quibbling about the definition of "Jabber". I simply meant that core part of Jabber is unaffected and is in fact immune from the problem of secret changes to closed protocols. Naturally any software -- whether in a client or server -- that connects to Yahoo's system has been affected. So yes, since Jabber servers have an optional component that can (or could) talk to Yahoo's system, you could say that Jabber has been affected if you like.

"By Product" my ass

[nurb432]

Its not a by product of their 'upgrading services'.

This IS an effort to block all 'non revenue' clients.

While it IS their network, and they can block whom ever they choose, I can also can choose to boycott all of yahoo! services due to them being a prick, and get everyone i know to also do so.

If they publish the new protocol, then they still get my business. Unlike another IM network who's parent wont be publishing and will work hard to force out all non native clients