Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Messaging Software Wars

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the browser-wars-v2? dept.

Mark Spencer wrote in to say that since the AOL vs. Microsoft fiasco has begun, the GAIM team has been told they aren't allowed to use the AOL logo and other various terms in their documentation (with certain exceptions), so they have put out a request for new logo in the form of a contest. This comes after AOL has been blocking Microsoft from letting its MSN users send messages to users of its AIM service, and right before IBM unveils messaging software of their own, though that looks to be very business-oriented, as opposed to Joe Random Netuser-oriented.

8 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Quarter? by Darchmare · · Score: 4

    Okay - someone out there develop an open-source messaging technology and get it out there. It's obvious that certain other players would rather not play fair.

    I'm not of the 'open-source it or it is evil' camp, but it is cases like this where there is obvious merit to the open-source idea.

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net

    --

    - Jeff
    1. Re:Quarter? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

      Well there are some around. Try Jabber which although not finished appears to be quite close to beta.

    2. Re:Quarter? by Coram · · Score: 4

      I am not sure that this applies equally well in this situation. Have a look at it this way. As things are there are two major providers of instant messaging software/service - AOL with its AIM client, and Mirabilis with its ICQ client. These are both proprietary systems developed closed source and have individually built up a huge user base. Various open source clients for both the ICQ and AIM services have appeared over time, (such as micq, licq, gtkicq, gaim, etc) which have all offered many of the features of the standard versions. The problem with the idea of open source servers is that Mirabilis and AOL would be openly supporting the fragmentation of their hard won user bases. As things are they are not even offering binaries of their server software, and I imagine they are not going to change this in the near future. Making the server side software source (say that ten times real fast!) open would likely result in a large number of additional IM services arising, which is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. It would essentially be like irc, with the ICQ/AIM user selecting a server to log onto when they launch the client, which they must have registered with in advance. The obvious downside of this, from a user point of view, is that you may have a number of friends scattered across different servers, who may in turn be stuck using their owns servers because of what their friends have been using. Open source can have good and bad consequences, in this case I am not sure that it is the way to go as the usefulness of ICQ/AIM services depends on them being used by everyone.

      --
      I say I ain't giving you no tree fiddy you goddamned Loch Ness monster, get yo own goddamned money!
  2. Security and Privacy by Lazy+Jones · · Score: 3
    Have you ever read the ICQ messenger license agreement? They clearly state that they want to scan the messages as well as other data (such as files on disk) for information and use it for advertising purposes, as well as selling the information. It wouldn't surprise me if other vendor's messenger software didn't have similar functionality... I stopped using ICQ on Windows because of this and will certainly never use a closed-source messaging client again.

    --
    "I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
  3. New logo by huh69 · · Score: 3

    One thing strikes me funny. I would've figured that AOL would be more in tune with letting the Linux community do some of the things they do. After all, both organizations have a common enemy, M$.

    I guess it doesn't surprize me that AOL would request the removal of the logo from this IM, but what purpose does that really serve? It was developed because there were people that wanted to communicate with others via AOL IM. Having their logo there would've been a plus as far as I see it.

    I do have to admit I was proud of AOL for sticking M$ the way they did with their protocol tweaks, but I hope this doesn't mean it's another M$ in the works. Having both ICQ and IM in their corner I don't really see much for M$'s future in the IM market. Maybe AOL should just take it easy. Then again, it is M$ that we're talking about.

    Decisions, decisions, decisions... just get me a reliable communbicating tool so I can play StarCraft and Quake with my friends....

  4. a different perspective... by met00 · · Score: 5
    1. AOL owns some servers.
    2. Microsoft write software that accesses those server without AOLs permission.
    3. Microsoft releases the software to 20,000 users.
    4. AOL servers are slowed down by this unauthorized traffic
    5. AOL consumers have reduced response time and other problems associated to server busy issues

    Where I come from using software to hammer someone elses computers and reduce their service levels is called a denial of service attack. Releasing over 20,000 copies of software to do that means that the company is knowingly attempting to deny service of registered users of that server access to the resources of the server.

    In simple terms, what Microsoft did was attempt to hijack the services of AOLs server, and now they are perfoming no less than a denial of service attack on those servers.

    Last time I checked, people go to jail for releasing software designed to damage other peoples servers.

  5. Re:Security by Colitis · · Score: 3

    Basically where the ICQ protocol is concerned, it's a case of "Security? What security?". I subscribed to an icq-devel mailing list for a while and to say it was eyebrow raising was an understatement. Amongst other things, features like requiring authorisation (for the non ICQ users among you - you can tell the ICQ service that other ICQ users can only see if you're online if you've authorised them first) are controlled by the CLIENT end. That is, instead of the client saying "is xxx online" and the server saying "you need authorisation" and the client saying to the user "Bugger! They've got to authorise you", what actually happens is that the server says "Yep, xxx is online, but you need authorisation" and the client is not supposed to tell the user this. So if you make an ICQ client, you have to specifically have code in it to honour the authorisation requirement, otherwise it's effectively non-existent. I wouldnt be surprised if the invisible function works much the same way - I should try getting a Windoze ICQ user to mark themselves invisible and seeing if I can still see them in LICQ :-)

    The protocol is also TRIVIALLY easy to spoof - LICQ even comes with the feature to send messages from any UIN. While I've not looked at the source I bet the code that does this is pretty simple. There were plenty of other examples of how bad the protocol was. No doubt some of the ICQ clone developers can go into far greater detail than I have (and maybe correct any boneheaded misconceptions on my part :-) )

  6. Re:Open source I.M. Project by Jamie+Zawinski · · Score: 4
    Maybe I'm misunderstanding how Jabber works (the info on the web site is extremely sparse) but from what I can tell, it's very server-centric. If I have to use a Jabber-specific server, I'm not interested at all. I think that's a losing approach. What I still want to see is a single client that speaks all extant protocols, without making me, the user, get bogged down in the details.

    Sorry if I've misunderstood what Jabber is all about; but if I've gotten it wrong, you should probably try and clarify this on the web site, because it's really hard to tell what your architecture and goals are, and why.

    I also don't understand why anyone would use AIM instead of IRC, except for the reasons of ``my new computer came with AIM and not IRC'' or ``my friends all use AIM and not IRC.'' The latter of which a multi-protocol client solves nicely.