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AIM Now (Mostly) Open To Developers
gregsblog writes "Today is a historic day at AOL as we announced a software development kit for AOL Instant Messenger. Open AIM will empower you, as the developer, to write custom clients and plugins.
For now, lets concentrate on the Open AIM SDK and get into what it can do for you. First, the development kit is written using COM, so plugins and custom clients can be written for Windows in languages like C++, VB, C#, and eventually J-Script. In the near future we will have solutions for LINUX, MAC and Windows Mobile devices. Why is this important? We now have a solution to provide all AIM users and consumers to build their own IM clients and to extend the features of Triton via plugins. Of course all of this is free of charge. How do I get started? Well my team has provided a quick start guide, and tutorials, in addition to numerous coding examples, from the simple to the complex. Our examples are in C++ and C#.
What are the limitations? Basically anything goes, with the exception of writing multi-headed clients."
Without advertising, how do they reach step 3?
... I mean, we've only been using Gaim for about five years now...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
GAIM allows you to write plugins in a variet of languages including python and C++ (and anything else that can link to dynamic libraries). Of course, I don't really see a massive need for IM plugins. All this announcement means is that we will see a million COM host AIM clients with crappy UIs.
I can interface with it on the hardware level? Cool...
Fleur de Sel
Maybe they'll offer AIM certifications. Like you could be an CACC... Certified AIM coder and configurer. They'll offer classes for $1200 a pop and provide stats on what the average CACCs make each and every year.
In the near future we will have solutions for LINUX, MAC and Windows Mobile devices.
Wow. That is really cool that they are planning to embed AIM capabilities directly into the Media Access Control sublayer. That should make AIM even more ubiquitous. It's a shame they have no plans to get this AIM SDK up and running on Mac OS X, though.
BTW, what does "LINUX" stand for? I've never heard of it.
The overall effectiveness of this will of course be determined by the users who are writing their own clients/plugins. Your mileage may vary. However, I do see this as a positive step forward, if only in an academic sense. With a major company making such an effort to have their software available for community modification, with tutorials and examples, I'd have to say that this is a nice step away from the monoculture software development. Even if you can't get anything truly useful out of it, it is interesting to take a look at what is offered and see what you might be able to learn from it. Never hurts to experiment.
Randimal: AT-CG-CG-AT-CG-AT-AT-CG-CG-AT-AT-CG-AT-CG-CG-AT-CG-AT-AT-CG-AT-CG-CG-AT-AT-CG-CG-AT-CG-AT-AT-CG
"Developers are not permitted to build Custom Clients that are multi-headed or interoperable with any other IM network."
The definition of "almost, but not quite totally useless" seems more appropriate.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
From the Gaim Wikipedia article:
Recently, the Gaim developers have started to separate the core code--which handles things such as network connections and messaging--from the GUI code, which controls how these actions are presented to the user. After the code split is complete, it will be possible to write client programs using a developer's GUI library of choice. The core library produced by the split will be called libgaim; an in-development but stable version of this library is already in use in the Adium, Fire, and Proteus clients as well as the Meebo web-based application.
So, in other words, AOL are going to have something much more limited than libgaim (AIM protocol only) available in the "near future"? Uhhh... congratulations AOL! Now bugger off, you jerk-burgers!
No, they're not releasing protocol specs from the looks of it. They're releasing a closed source library that people can write their apps around.
BTW, multi-protocol clients a la Gaim and Trillian are verboten with this new library.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Verboten? Then I will nicht use it on meinen boxen.
We don't need no stinkin' SDKs.. why not officially document and open up the API instead? That way we can call it and do what we want on any platform without having to worry about SDKs.
Wow...this is completely assinine. They could have spent the past year by actually making AIM open. The IETF did release XMPP/Jabber as an RFC nearly a year ago. AOL should have dropped this library and added support for server to server XMPP connections. They could also have made client to server connections use XMPP. Not only would that allow them to connect to Google and everyone else, they would have no need to release a library that only the script kiddy next door will use in his new VB botnet controller.
"I was given a bottle of wine. I could see the wine, and they said it was open. I knew better because I was never given a bottle opener to taste the oh so sweet wine."
Is this the first step to a true IM system that is complementary system to email?
;-) ) more developers will integrate IM into their applications. In a few years we should have one dominant protocol, and from then on IM will finally become as transparant as email is now.
If more IM vendors start opening up (Jabber, my personal favorite, has always been open, ofcourse
then again i'll be driving with 4 scandily clad girls in my newest lexus besides copacabana beach.
Still, it's a good fantasy
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
Yes, it would be just terrible if something like that were to happen...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I've seen the opposite. I have never seen anybody talking on the AIM network with any software other than AIM. Sure I realize people use other clients, but your average everyday user just goes to aim.com and downloads it. I've used gaim before, but now I don't really bother with chat at all. I just wanted to point out that tons of people do use the AIM client.
nothing
I, for one, am very glad they're making steps to opening the API to outside developers.
But one critical question comes to mind: In the past, AOL has been very picky and fussy about "non-authorized" tools and processes accessing their "IM network infrastructure." Their TOS does not (or, at least, did not) allow anything other than genuine AOL AIM clients to access their infrastructure.
Does this new development opportunity change the TOS such that non-AOL AIM clients can now access the infrastructure (while remaining within the boundaries of acceptability)? Several companies have banned anything other than genuine AIM clients because of AOL's AIM TOS. Has this changed?
A Passionate Independent Musician
There are already such libraries, libgaim for instance, which support AIM and many other protocols, and which are open source and cross platform.
Having the sourcecode to libraries is incredibly usefull, if you already developing an app then you presumeably have a reasonable knowlege of atleast one programming language, so you can read the source to the library and get a better understanding of why it performs in a particular way...
I've quite often beat my head against a wall, trying to debug why something didn't behave exactly as the documentation said it should.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
From AIM's FAQ:
Q: Are there any restrictions on what I can build?
A: We tried to make the Open AIM Program as restriction-free as possible, but in order to help protect our network and users, certain rules apply. We have highlighted some below, but please refer to the Developers License Agreement for details.
* Developers are not permitted to build Custom Clients that are multi-headed or interoperable with any other IM network.
* Custom Clients developed for use on a mobile device or via a wireless telecommunications carrier's network and/or wireless services require separate licensing and business agreements with AOL. Any inquiries regarding mobile applications should be sent to AIMCommercial@aol.com.
* Custom Clients designed for sale to a corporate customer base or to serve a corporate employee base require separate licensing and business agreements with AOL. Any inquiries regarding enterprise use should be sent to AIMCommercial@aol.com.
Here come the AIM bots.
I think that iChat is the "official" AIM client on Mac OS X. Back when it first came out, there was much hoopla about Apple having reached some sort of agreement with AOL, which I assume probably involved a gym bag stuffed with cash or a horse's head in somebody's waterbed, that allowed them to make a non-AOL but still completely interoperable client.
You'll notice that unlike Gaim, and like the official AIM client, iChat does all the file transfer and direct connect stuff without problems (almost all the time, so basically in the same situations that the AIM program would).
I think this is why AOL's Mac OS X efforts have been effectively suspended -- Apple is doing it for them.
And frankly, given what a pile of turds the AOL client always was, I'm quite happy that they leave it this way.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
With the limitations imposed by the license, there doesn't seem to be much value to this. Thinking out of the box though, perhaps it is a setup for new lawsuits against the other clients cracking into the network. By opening up, even to this limited extent, they may be countering some of the arguments anticipated where other clients are claiming that AOL left them no viable alternative other than reverse engineering the protocols and cracking in.
Yeah. Because they wouldn't lose 100% of their non-aol users the day they started charging for aim. Plenty of instant messaging protocols out there that people can switch too. Right now, no one bothers to look for anything else, but the moment they're told to get their credit card, you can bet they're going to hit google to search for something else. And tell their friends.
They're not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. Most of us who use third party clients don't even realize this, but the official clients has ads. Annoying ads. I'd guess from my failed attempt to convince people to use gaim that most of their users don't care, and use the official client anyway, so they're getting money for it. I'm not implying this is a bad thing, mind you. Good for them. Just saying they're not doing you any favors.
And they stopped deliberately breaking other clients for the most part.
Yeah, surprisingly good business decision there. First, it was futile. They would pay their developers to keep breaking the clients, and it'd last the better part of a day before all the other clients were fixed. Big deal, a lot of money wasted. Also, before other clients worked reliably, there was a big deal about cracks to the aim client to remove all ads. Now the people who care about this things, unlike the people I mentioned above, go to the superior third-party clients. Which means they're reasonably sure that everyone using their official client is seeing the ads.
Again, they're not doing you a favor. If they could get rid of all third party clients for good, they would.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
For the masses at large, this means you cannot use ANY GPLed code, or any code that causes you to redistribute your code freely.
This makes sense in the context of custom clients as you would be required to redistribute the client and the associated source code (which you cannot do because of closed source nature of the AOL libraries.) But as a consequence, it's worth paying attention to and will have some nasty effects on code reuse.
The SDK is the same SDK used by the official AIM clients, so there are no different rules, and you get access to all the features.
Regarding 3rd party clients - we think that we can build a competitive client. If people don't want to use our client, we don't think it makes sense to force them to do so.
Regarding how this is a good move for AOL - there are a number of IM networks to choose from, and we think increased creativity and client choice is a way to position our network ahead of the rest. Also, ads aren't the only way to make money. If 3rd party clients feature our VoIP service (which is built into the SDK), we make money off that regardless of what client is being used.