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Yahoo Restored in Some IM Clients
Sparks23 writes "Third-party instant messaging clients have begun to reconnect to Yahoo. While the authorization scheme has not been completely decoded -- expect some bumps -- Gaim and Trillian have both partially restored connectivity. Gaim has the new authorization scheme in CVS and their new 0.70 release, and Cerulean has made a beta patch available for Trillian Pro 2.0; consider both patches 'beta' for the moment."
And for other flame bate, it also support GPG encryption of packets over any IM protocol, and is interoperable with Kopete's encryption as well.
There is no silver bullet. Plus, werewolves make better neighbors than zombies or vampires anyway.
Much as I like both GAIM and Trillian, sooner or later, probably by some kind of hard wired authenication/security mechanism, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsft will manage to block these clients often enough and for long enough that they'll lose their utility.
Looking down the road, I think the only hope for open clients are open IM servers, probably, IMHO, based on Jabber.
Steven
> For those of you who don't RTFA
There is no FA, jackass
The latest release of Fire, v.0.32.f, also restored Yahoo! connectivity. The MSN network will be blocked on October 15th, though.
Summary of the current state of discussion regarding Yahoo on Slashdot:
1. "Poor Yahoo. Nasty Indian government officials restricting this company from providing its valuable services to the internet."
2. "Damn Yahoo. Nasty corporate goons restricting people from using its services. We should all switch to Jabber."
Actually, reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability is expressly permitted by the DMCA. Under the current laws the best Yahoo! or MSN can hope to do is stay one step ahead in an IM arms race - locking out competing clients until they reverse engineer the protocol again.
Shh.
Yahoo has been trying to help the other Y! messenger clients update their code to work with the new protocol....they're NOT trying to kill them off.
I'm particularly happy to see this move, because Yahoo is about the only big corporation which is working on Unix versions of their client. Yahoo has Solaris, BSD, and Linux versions of the messenger. Moreover, from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ymessenger/ mailing list they're ACTUALLY speculating on releasing their source code for their UNIX clients:
Subject: New poll for ymessenger
Enter your vote today! A new poll has been created for the ymessenger group:
Would you like to have access to Yahoo Messenger Sources?
o Yes
o No
o Why should I?
To vote, please visit the following web page:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ymessenger/survey
Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups web site listed above.
Thanks!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
You know what they say about "assume."
We helped Trillian awhile back connect to Yahoo when they changed the protocol. They're returning the favor. We have a good relationship with the Trillian people.
As much as I respect the Trillian and Gaim developers for adapting their clients on such short notice, I think they've got the wrong approach to the whole IM thing. For now, the two groups (or group and company I guess) are integrating IM clients into a single program with a clean interface. Many of us love the idea, and use their two clients, but this isn't fixing the underlying problems which allow MS and Yahoo to cause havoc by modifying their proprietary protocols. What Gaim and Trillian need to do is integrate users.
The main instant messaging protocols are already supported, namely Yahoo, AIM, MSN and ICQ. The problem, which has been addressed a ton of times on /., is that users go to the IM network that their friends are on, and so all four networks (with ICQ trailing) have significant user bases. But this can change if Gaim and Trillian get a bit creative. Simply put, add an open source protocol to the mix of supported protocols (Jabber) and let the rest work itself out.
What I think would happen is that Gaim and Trillian users would use Jabber to talk to each other, and use the commercial protocols to talk to the rest of their friends. As time goes on, these other friends could be migrated to Trillian or Gaim, maintaining contact with their MSN/AIM/etc buddies while now speaking Jabber to their Trillian and Gaim friends. This could be repeated indefinitely, and as Gaim and Trillian's user bases grow over time, there would be no reason to use commercial protocols because most people would already speak Jabber, courtesy of Gaim and Trillian supporting it.
In short, I believe Gaim and Trillian could serve as middlemen in switching users over to open source protocols like Jabber. The clients' ability to speak a multitude of protocols can bridge the gap between those pushing forward to open source protocols and those retaining backwards compatibility to their commercial protocol speaking friends.
*blinking cursor*
Okay, so a site ain't an article, but all you had to do was follow a link, and there it is. Train harder, grasshopper.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
FYI: Trillian 2.0 Pro tries to authenticate the user over the internet and refuses to work if it cannot contact the Cerulean Studios servers.
This misfeature originally appeared in the beta and we (the users) were led to believe (in the forums) that it will not make it into the final release. Guess what, it did.
This creates problems with users behind corporate firewalls, those running local servers on intranets, etc. It makes Trillian vulnerable to DOS attacks on a single source and in general is a pain (for example, on my machine it starts and tries to connect before the SW firewall finishes loading).
While "patches" for this behaviour are widely available (no, I will not link to one, use your favourite "crack search" site then contemplate the fallacy of "copy protection"), I see it more as a trust issue.
Cerulean Studios doesn't trust me (a paying customer) and, after that stunt, I have a hard time trusting them.
Therefore, I am no longer recommending Trillian to anyone. Rather, I urge people to look at the available alternatives (Gaim, Easy Message, AYTTM and others).
Hmmm... Can anyone take it upon themselves to compile a comparison between the available multiprotocol IM clients?