Slashdot Mirror
It's Time To Take Back Instant Messaging
Enigma5O writes "The TechZone says the world of instant messaging is a disjointed mess, and it's time for a citizen's revolt. From the article: "The obstacles in this case are three big companies: AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft. Each wants to keep their networks closed, thereby forcing consumers to use their brand of software and effectively using their size to eliminate competition. Five years ago, Yahoo! and Microsoft were calling for then-leader AOL/ICQ to open their network to allow others to compete. They even successfully petitioned the FCC to restrict AOL's future developments before approving the AOL/Time Warner merger. When it was convenient for their business goals, Microsoft and Yahoo! waved the interoperability flag, but now that both companies have built substantial IM communities with their own closed networks, they have lost their passion for open networks.""
How do you take back something you never owned in the first place?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Add Skype to the list, for there are many people who use it as an IM app. It would be great if we could unify the different protocols and have one big IM network. I, for one, hate to need different accounts here and there to be able to talk to my friends.
Global warming is a cube.
One major problem is that people tend to have their "IM Cliques". Meaning that some people (and their friends) usually have a preferred client. They usually don't want to switch over to anything else, because their friends are all on AOL/AIM/MSN/Yahoo!. One solution is like Trillian which consolidates everything into one interface. The other suggestions made by the article are good, but I still think it would be a little hard to migrate people from their "cliques" over to something new.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Wow, this article is right on the money, what with Microsoft and Yahoo announcing that they're going to link their IM networks.
We can call it...
Internet Relay Chat
It will be HUGE
Jabber is the way to go. It's open, scalable, distributed and simple.
The problem are social connections. People are on MSN because their friends are on MSN. Same for Yahoo!
But who from your contact list/roster, in the first place, came on MSN or Yahoo!? Well, users who were advertised by their Yahoo! account or using the MSN client being shipped with Windows. Compare to "Who made you join ICQ, or IRC". No ads, only because it was the way to go, because some computer techies back then told you it was great (well, it WAS indeed).
Slashdot crowd and others, being [...] computer and technologies aware, should be the first link in each of our own socials network to tell others to go Jabber. Non-techie people should trust us on the technical side: Jabber is way better designed than others major IMs services. The Jabber community, for now, is mainly composed of geeks and free software hobbyists. Let's tell our friends to make the switch. It's a little time consumming the first time, but it's free. Tell them to use GTalk (which should be openly federating soon, even with some restrictions to avoid 'spim'..) or any other Jabber server.
There are tons of great clients for Jabber. Under GNU/Linux, you may try Gajim, Tkabber, Gaim or Psi. Under Mac OS X, Gush, Psi or of course iChat. And for those still under Windows, Miranda, Exodus, Gaim or Psi. Google for them.
And they will soon ALL support the feature you want, just give it some time More info
Yep, and the same thing happened with documents, hence OpenDocument format might save the day. Unfortunatly, Microsoft is doing the same shit with the WMV format. It is closed and encrypted and only works on proprietary systems. This was sole purpose for this was to swqeeze FOSS out. Folk are making home video with webcams and don't realise that they are making "closed" movies. It's very sad that the monopolistic behavior is not being stopped.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Except that it's Windows-only, and Jabber plugin is only available in the (non-free) Pro version.
You're heading towards making a good point but it all falls apart when you start talking about cars and TVs.
It doesn't matter if your car and my car are interoperable because our cars never have to communicate between each other (yet). Neither of us would benefit in anyway if it were possible for us to swap belts or hoses or mufflers or whatever.
But it does not matter when it comes to a communication platform. What if you couldn't call someone because they used AT&T and you used Sprint? What if your Nextel cellphone could only connect to other Nextel cellphones? You would clearly think that it was ridiculous. An earlier reply to your comment was on the right track about ISPs and email. But what if you couldn't email him because you could only email within your own ISP? What if you could only visit websites hosted by your ISP? What would be the point? The internet wouldn't never have developed under these kind of preposterous circumstances. But those are a much better analogy for the IM world.
Then you throw in GAIM, Trillian, and whoever else that tries to establish general connectivity and the "monopolies" fight to keep them out. Equivalent to a third party company setting up one set of phone lines to AT&T and one set to Sprint and then when you (on you're AT&T phone) want to call someone on a Sprint phone you call the third party first and they make the connection for you. Or even better, you personally get both kinds of phones and both kinds of phonelines and then have the third party come to your house and wire up a hacked connection between them. Then in the middle of the night, someone from Sprint sneaks up to your house and cuts the wires. Or else they modulate their phone signal with propietary garbage that only they know how to filter out so you still have the connection but it's useless.
Would you still fight against a citizen's revolt in a circumstance like that?
I will point out however, that what I first quoted from you above is still an important comment. Notice that in all my silly analogies I never said that Sprint and AT&T should merge (with all the other telcos) and become one gigantic conglomerate. Instead, they should still all exist (competition is good), they just all need to recognize that they would all benefit if they established general connectivity (well, all minus Trillian, etc unless you just prefer their interface).
Right now, people primarily choose to use existing IM services solely because their friends do. If they all interoperated, then we would choose them based on their quality of service (just as we ideally do with cellphones, etc). And then hopefully that quality of service would finally start to improve.
My religion is better than yours is.