AOL Opens Up the AIM Instant Messaging Network

AVIDJockey writes "In a pleasantly surprising move, AOL has changed its tune when it comes to third-party access to the company's chat network. America Online has recently launched a service called OpenAIM 2.0, which provides open, uninhibited access to services like Meebo, or all-in-one IM clients like Pidgin, allowing them to freely and easily use the AIM instant messaging network. 'At the moment, multi-platform IM desktop clients like Pidgin or Adium (the popular Mac client) generally rely on hacking and reverse engineering access to chat networks run by AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and others. Not only is that bad for developers since it means more work, it also means that such clients often can't use all the features of a particular network.'"

Comments

Required features

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Can GPL-compatible software (or really any kind of open-source software) be written, given these restrictions?

Open AIM Additional Feature Requirements

Welcome to Open AIM! If you intend to develop and distribute an AIM Custom Client (including mobile versions) or Web AIM Developer Application, you must pick 2 of the 5 options listed below and incorporate them into your Developer Applications. These options include

• Advertising
• Buddy Info
• Expressions and Buddy Icons
• AIM Start Page
• AIM Toolbar

Just to be clear, these requirements don't apply to Plugins, Bots or the use of the Presence Indicators. Please note that if your application exceeds 100,000 peak simultaneous users, you must implement Advertising as described below as one of your two options.

Not sure what will work best for your application? Don't worry. You can always change your selections to suit your needs as you grow.

This is starting to look as if now that everyone knows the OSCAR protocol anyway, AOL is trying to make a power grab under the guise of openness...

Re:Required features

[gparent]

This is really not useful at all, then. Any decent application will have 100,000 users at a time, so this means we're getting advertising in Pidgin if they decide to implement it (I hope not). Self-Compile with stripped advertising, anyone?

Re:Restrictions

[TheRaven64]

It seems poorly worded, but I think they do not want to allow bridging. For example, Microsoft could create a server-side bridge to AIM and put a box in the next version of MSNM for people to enter their AIM IDs. They would then see AIM users as MSN users, stop using the AIM client, and forget about the AOL brand. Currently, AIM is bridged with GTalk, and I presume AOL get a fair amount of money from Google because of it. I suspect that AOL have realised that IM standardisation is inevitable and that they can make more money selling their customers to other IM networks in the short-term, before they become just another IM provider in the same way that they are an email and web hosting provider.

Allowing people to connect to the network using other clients helps this strategy, since it means more people will actively use the network and they can charge higher fees for the bridges to GTalk, MSN, Y!IM and so on. Allowing people to build bridges with this would completely destroy their new business model.

Re:Well...

[bem]

Indeed, and I just spent this morning setting up an internal IM server for my employer, using the mysql database they use for their intranet server as the authentication (yay for one password) and it talks to googletalk just fine and dandy.

The hardest part was finding a package with the feature set I wanted (um, mysql authentication)

Now our employees can chat with each other in real time (double-secure... SSL connections and not going offsite) or with customers (still SSL, but have to trust their server).

If AOL was serious, they would just implement a Jabber gateway on their end.

Re:Well...

[nine-times]

I don't know if it's too late. AIM still has TONS of users. It's not clear to me how AOL intends to make money from AIM if people are using other clients without embedded ads, but I guess I don't really care either.