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Yahoo Changes Protocol, Blocks Third Party Clients
NaDrew writes "ZDNet reports that Yahoo is once again blocking connections from Trillian (the alternative multi-protocol client). Yahoo tried this a few times last year and it looks like they're trying again. Cerulean, maker of Trillian, employs some excellent protocol engineers, who I have no doubt will quickly figure out Yahoo's latest obfuscation and release a patch. A quick fix discovered late this evening: Change your Y!IM host from scs.msg.yahoo.com to scs.yahoo.com, port 5050, and it should work. This is on Trillian 0.74H, not Pro."
Centericq is also broken. I'd be happy to use an official Yahoo! IM client...if they had one that was console-based.
Yeah, blocking people from chatting with their protocol will help anything.
I think it blocks gaim also.
Help! I'm being repressed!
The quick fix to changing the server to scs.yahoo.com, port 5050 does not work for most people, and does not work with Miranda IM, GAIM, or other third party IM clients besides Trillian.
It appears to be a separate server, and you won't be able to communicate with other people on the 'fixed' yahoo servers.
Brielle
Oh, wait...
Haven't been able to connect to Yahoo via Kopete since the block.
While the Open-source people here usually have a hard time comprehending why someone like yahoo would do this, consider the following. Ad revenue from y! Instant Messenger: $$$ As revenue from user connected to trillian: 0 Of course yahoo understands that their client may not be the best out there, yet without any additional ad revenues it makes it tough to explain to upper management that it is worth allowing any old client to connect.
I could dig up the older comments/articles which thoroughly contradict this troll-ish article summary but I don't think it deserves my time.
Yahoo did not, I repeat did *not* try to "block" third party IM clients "several times last year". *All* they did was upgrade their protocol for better reliability/etc (I have personally noticed the increase in reliability/refresh rate etc). It is up to the 3rd party developers to upgrade their protocols if Yahoo decides to do so.
And Yahoo did offer to help them fix their stack to help it work with their servers. I am not affiliated to Yahoo, btw - I just think it receives a lot more undeserved flak then it should.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
In short, scs.yahoo.com:5050 is no good.
I've been using Trillian for about 2 years now and think it's a great application. However, there's a reason Yahoo never gave users the ability to send out a mass-message to everyone on your contact list. When programs such as Trillian start including this feature, the potential for abuse is fairly obvious.
Well, does anyone know if this is just a protocol upgrade or if yahoo! is really trying to get rid of the third party clients?
If they want to get rid of 3rd party clients, then this is just another arms race, meaning we will eventually have open clients that work, after some finite delay.
In all honesty I can't blame yahoo! for trying. After all, for each person that doesn't see the ads associated with their official client, they lose revenue.
Yahoo! is a great site and they provide a LOT of stuff for free, so I don't blame them for trying to get some money back for all the free stuff they have given us over the years. I guess since IMing is so popular and so much time is spent in the IM client, to them that's a LOT of missing eyeballs over a long period of time that don't get to see the ads. That's a lot of money lost by the minute. And let's face it.. we are using their computers for free, and not giving anything back each time we use a third party client.
My question though, is that if they hate third party IM clients for cutting into their rev. stream, why don't they take the law out of their own hands and use the law to their advantage? Is there nothing that could be done, by drafting some clever EULA or something, that would make it illegal or something like that to use 3rd party clients? That might actually dampen the efforts with libyahoo and other projects that try to develop an open protocol lib. Sourceforge might even cease to host such projects, being that they are in the realm of piracy or accorting to the DMCA.
While it would suck for me (as I love to use centericq over their stupid client), why don't they just make it illegal to use third party clients?
For the same reason the tech community comes out with patches for holes in programs, why we come out with virus protection, etc.... To try and stop people from doing what we do not want them to do. It may not be permenant, but it will work
Now my question, didn't the gov't come out with a law a while ago forcing AOL to share their IM standards so third party software could integrate with it? And if so, wouldn't this apply to all IM software, including Yahoo?
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Don't log out.
Because strangely enough Yahoo as a company would like to make a profit. They provide some excellent free services to users and are heavily reliant on advertising revenue from these to generate income to fund their operations. Yes the adds can be be a tad annoying but I get a very good email and IM service for free so I am not going to complain. 3rd party clients cut out a potential source of revenue for Yahoo so while there is money involved for them they will always bother.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
In an era where instant messaging is touting as the "next big thing", most service providers are always faced with the dilemma of whether to allow third party clients to connect, or prevent.
Messaging clients with advertisement-based model will surely object to allowing third party clients to connect, since it doesnt make any business sense.
Furthermore, they may have allowed such third party clients in the past, to gain that critical mass that ensures market peneration and continued usage, but once they are past the bell curve, they would then clam down on it.
Think of it as an equivalent to Microsoft clamping down on piracy - they never prevented that in the past knowing that so long as its their products being used, they will be able to generate revenues one way or the other. Now that the market penetration is coming to a saturation (or if not, there are far more alternative solutions available than ever before), they have started to really put on the squeeze.
Finally, companies like trillian may well have the best protocol engineers in the world, but such disruptions in service shall push away customers every time, however small the percentage might be. Unless connectivity to widely used messengers is provided by agreement, such connectivity outages will cause most users to move to move away from them.
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Of course, the best solution is to create a superior protocol and set of clients, get it standardized, and somehow get them widely adopted (yeah, I know, this is the hard part), and make it so that Yahoo and MSN want their messengers to be compatible with IT.
I know this is pie in the sky, but this whole messenger war seems so stupid. Wasn't someone working on a standards for a messenger protocol? This whole messenger war thing seems so stupid and only serves to piss users off.
This is ind of like copy protection and DRM. They keep trying to stop people and people just keep getting around it. Nobody ever seems to learn. Are they just going to keep beating their heads against the wall until the end of time? Are all these guys that clueless and stubborn?
Who blames them? When they decide to upgrade their product and add new features to their protocol, do you really expect them to test for backwards compatibility with all the unsupported 3rd party IM clients!? They never provided an API/protocol spec. They never provided developer support to 3rd parties. They have *no obligation* to maintain compatiblity and they clearly won't and shouldn't let backwards compatibility interfere with new features in their own clients. Damn tin foil hats.
Is this article supposed to make Yahoo look evil? If so, I don't see how. I know the popular notion on /. that "information wants to be free", but Yahoo provides a free service, and as with a free service, you are at the mercy of the provider. So Yahoo wants you to use their official client, it isn't the end of the world, nor do I think it is even newsworthy here on /. I am prepared for the inevitable karma loss on this comment, but I have been maxed out for years, it does not bother me anymore.
I hate sigs.
Wouldn't this be Jabber?
It's already there, open source, many servers, and intercommunication possible between multiple servers.
And some people have made proxies for jabber-commerical messenger systems communication.
And it works with many, many clients, console-based as well as graphical...
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
hmmm.... (ponders the ethical dillema)....
Anyone know why Trillian isn't paying for use? Have Yahoo and company offered?
Agile Artisans
Makes you just itch for a google client doesn't it?
'Cause if it's Google it must be good!
GMail - like turning on the lights and watching the cockaroaches scatter!
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Everyone keeps talking about how Yahoo wants to profit from the ads in it's Y! Messenger Software. What Ads? Unless you look at the other screens [you known the non-chat ones] you will not see any other ads
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
"3rd party clients cut out a potential source of revenue for Yahoo"
Actually, 3rd party clients are the ONLY way they receive revenue from some of us. I keep a Yahoo and Hotmail email account. I rarely IM anyone outside of AIM. Trillian's checking of Yahoo email drives me to their site (where I see their ads). No checking, I don't go as often to check my mail. They lose money. As far as I'm concerned, Yahoo is shooting themselves in the foot.
Get a clue. If you're going to offer an analogy, at least make it an appropriate one.
It doesn't cost the kernel developers anything for RedHat to sell their work. They produce the kernel for their own use and for others to use. Redhat packages it up and sells it.
When you use Trillian to send an IM via Yahoo, you're using Yahoo's servers, which they purchase and pay to maintain, and their bendwidth, which they also pay for. You're costing them money, and you're not viewing their ads, which is the method they use to make money. From their viewpoint, you're a leech on their services.
No such drain occurs on the kernel developers from Redhat selling their product.
I have no problem with Open Source products which use Yahoo or other IM providers. But if Trillian wants to make money off their product, then they should license the right to access Yahoo's servers. That's a personal opinion; my understanding is that they're not be under any _legal_ obligation to do so, and I'm not implying anything different here.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
The Trillian guys have fixed it. You can grab the patches(Trillian Pro 2.013 & Trillian Basic Patch I) from the Trillian download page.
I don't know if you're on Windows, but i am, and i find that Gaim (for Windows) is a pretty poor client. I mean, it's OK, but compared to other things, it needs a lot of work. It seems to me like the Windows version of Gaim was nothing more than an after-thought. I can't get work done (I'm paid to sit around instant-messaging my friends all day -- true story.) using an after-thought. ;_;
So... i use Miranda. Needs a lot of work also, but it's much better off than Gaim, i find, and it's just as open.
Many of my fellow posters have suggested that the solution is for people to switch to Jabber. I agree that the solution should start with Jabber, but it's not as easy as asking everyone to please switch.
I'm going to try to identify the obstacles to a migration to open standards, and I hope that others will expand on this and maybe even offer some solutions.
How do you convince ISPs to begin deploying Jabber servers as they would deploy mail servers? Is there any money to be made in deploying and operating a worldwide network of Jabber servers? If so, maybe some entrepreneur could come up with a clever idea for bootstrapping the network.
As some people have mentioned, it is possible that IM may evolve interoperability naturally, but I wouldn't count on that happening anytime soon. The final weapon of the proprietary IM providers will be to add crypto authentication to the protocol, with a key embedded into the clients. They would then have a solid legal recourse (DMCA) against "rogue" clients seeking interoperability. (Who knows, though... that could be a useful selling point for open standards!)
There... now that I've identified the problems, all that's left is for someone to provide the solutions. ;)