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AT&T Re-ignites Instant Messaging War
travisd writes "Looks like AT&T Worldnet is trying to play Microsoft - no, not in being a monopoly, but in trying to horn in on AOL's IM turf. The Washington Post has the story.
" Yes, it's the return of the IM Wars - we had covered this this past summer. Microsoft was in the right on this one - a standard does need to be made, by an industry-wide group.
I guess the battle over access to cable modem networks has spilled out onto other fronts.
There is a lot of animosity between AT&T/TCI/Exite@Home and AOL right now, and I wouldn't doubt AT&T folks did this simply to show AOL who's "boss."
if you couldn't call your friend's house because they were using Microsoft Phone and you had AOL's You've Got A Phone. Sometimes standards are a good thing.
Apple was supposedly working with AOL to integrate AIM into the system at some level. I wonder whatever came of that...
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Jabber.
We have the AIM tranport working, and 0.8 should be aout soon. ICQ transport is coming very soon.
Any of the "new" instant messaging services, that is. Currently, the only one I bother to keep up on my desktop is good ol' Yahoo! pager. No, it probably doesn't have all the fancy capabilities of the newer things, but I'm used to it, and it gets me by. Besides, it is what all my Internet contacts use as well.
Mike Eckardt meckardt@spam.yahoo.com
Yet another story on compatibility and standards. It's amazing how much mileage these big companies manage to get out of a single reason to bicker.
Salocin.com
Am I taking AOL's side here? No. I think that if AOL wants to keep the their protocol non-standardized then Yahoo!, MS, and AT+T need to get together and make a standard protocol. Soon people will drop AOL's IM because they can communicate with more people through the new standardized system and AOL will suffer for its wrongdoings.
MS nor AT+T is accomplishing nothing by keeping this war going on, except maybe for once MS is in the role of the good guy and they don't want to lose that
It strikes me that instant messaging is one of those areas where _everyone_ needs to either be on the same service, or the services all need to be open to each other.
Since there is no financial incentive to allow your competitors to access your servers (and you customers), it seems to me that the only way around this is a global service run on a not for profit basis, that allows _anyone_ to use it with any client they like (ie, open the message protocols to the public).
No company could make money from this (after all, if you can write your own client, you'd leave out the bit that displayed the advertising, wouldn't you?), so it seems to be a prime target for a government funded initiative.
Now, I don't like the idea of "The Government" being involved in my messaging any more than you do, but it does seem that some sort of international task force, funded by a variety of governments (or the UN) would solve a lot of these kind of problems.
All critisicms are, of course, gratefully recieved.
My Journal
I think IM needs a standard. Pagers have standards. email has standard (SMTP,POP3)
web has standards (HTTP,HTTPS)
Its time to take the IM war out of the hands of coporations who want to make money and into the hands of the users, where it will benefit all.
Speaking as the sysadmin in a cyber cafe, I'm really beginning to hate instant messaging. Every time we crank up a computer, it loads yahoo, MS, icq, aim...
Having seen what people use (and why), I can be fairly confident that AT&T's effort is doomed, if not to failure, then to obscurity.
MS's version took off like a rat out of an aqueduct, simply because of that big-ass banner on the top of the hotmail page. To people who only use the computer for hotmail, this was an added feature, and one they embraced[1]. Aim, of course, already has godzillions of users.
So what about worldnet? Its new messenger will appeal only to those who haven't already got an account with one of the biggies. Anyone else'll ignore it.
[1]hotmail used to have a banner ad for internet telephony. At lest five times a day I had to explain that it was an ad, and not something they could use in hotmail.
ICQ has > 55,000,000 people using it
AOL has about the same
Yahoo had 20,000,000 I think the last time I heard
How many more people can want to keep in touch with people? Or is it going to be a case where we need once client to talk to Dave, and one for Sally and Fred (being the guy who has to have the newest software) we need a 3rd.
The article refers to an IETF effort to pruce an instant messageing standard, if anyone is interested here is the url to it's chater page.
For anyone who hasn't been following this issue you have several different messageing programs all backed by one company or another which do not 'talk' to each other. An equivelenet would be if it was imposible to phone somone from your phone because there phone came from a different telco. The situation is completely stupid, all logic dictates that communications systems designed for the same purpose should be able to talk to each other.
AT&T are doing the right thing in the wrong way, inter operability should be a priority but not by some strange kludge that only works one way. Does anyone else agree that if this carries on for much longer it may be a job for legislation to bring the IM providers into line
One thing that really impressed me was the success of icq, I never really use it myself but a totaly centralized propriatry system being that big a success is not exactly the norm on the on interent.
Granted, ICQ is more than just a simple "IM" program. It's got a lot more than any of the others do, so I'm not sure but what it might be considered a different type of program. However, it does serve IM purposes, so it would be nice to see it included in the standards.
That's why the standards need to be extensible, so that programs like ICQ can conform to the standards, but keep their added functionality (like file transfers, game matching, multiple types of "away" messages, extensive user info, etc.).
Powers&8^]
Powers&8^]
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The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
As I understand it, there are two issues here, and a lot of knee-jerking going on as well. First off, the protocol issue. I think Microsoft / AT&T have every right to try and clone the protocol used by AIM. I think there may even have been legal rulings over in the US about the legality of reverse-engineering protocols. AOL, of course, are entitled to change there protocol, but leaving a gaping security hole (allegedly) in the clients to do so is unacceptable. Secondly, there's the question of access to servers. AIUI, Microsoft's client was connecting to AOL's servers in order to communicate with AIM users. Regardless of what you feel AOL ought to do, those servers are their property. They have the right to decide who should and should not have access. If they decide the servers are for use only by AOL/AIM users, it's their choice. If I understand correctly, Microsoft or its software's users might have been committing an offence under the UK's Computer Misuse Act.
AOL blocks AT&T WorldNet instant messages
That's like saying "We had a gate, but no fences, and no one came through the gate"
Security, by definition, can't be bypassed. Maybe AOL did have the right to stop MS using it's servers, but that should have been defined in the licence, and enforced using real security measures. "Security by obscurity" is not security.
You expect the occasional bug in a product, but just not telling people how it operates is not a viable security method.
I've found this wonderful new technology. Its called email. It allows you to send a message to a person, and they can reply to it too. Unfortunately it's completely open and every program works pretty much the same.
Why on earth do people need these things? What is wrong with an email. If you need to contact someone really quickly, why not use that other piece of incredibly useful technology. We call it a phone.
This is exactly the same as the HTML standard. These companies should agree on one standard and stick to it. Imagine some company trying to make a server and browser that did not comply to the standard on purpose... oh, wait.
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
I _HATE_ instant messaging! It keeps interfering with my game of Freecell.
The fundemental principle underlying instant messaging schemes is identical to that underlying office productivity software. The software is *inherently* worthless and becomes worthwhile if and only if there is a critical mass of people who use it. Once the population using a particular incompatible with anything else software reaches this level, new users will tend to use this service as well, establishing a de facto standard that other providers must comply with if they want to reach the majority of users.
Treat this as flamebait if you will, but I do not believe that establishing Yet Another Standard for Instant Messaging is the solution to these problems. As long as users have the freedom to switch from service to service, as they do now, the relative popularity of each service will fluctuate with respect to it's utility to the user. The real issue is not whether standards are neccesary (they aren't at this point and won't be beneficial until the technology matures) but whether companies have the right to use the networks of other companies. As I see it, creating artificial boundaries splinters the community and benefits nobody, neither the company that does the restriction, nor anybody else benefits. With bandwidth availability skyrocketing and new communications technologies being developed almost daily, does it truly make any sense to lock in an IM standard that will be obselete practically as it is approved? I would much rather have a de facto standard that is flexible than a rigid actual standard.
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Well the way I see it MS has no business asking for open standards in instant messeging protocals if they have closed protocals in other forms of networking. In particular SMB, thats the protocal network neighborhood runs on. The Samba team has reverse engineered most of it, but the last time I checked Samba still couldn't be a Primary Domain Controller you have to buy NT if you want that. I haven't followed all this HTML stuff, but those MS extensions are they an open standard, I don't think so, someone correct me if I'm wrong. And their file formats for Office. MS thinks its of deathly importance that all IM clients should be able to talk to each other, but they don't think I should be able to read spreadsheets, databases, word-processing documents, etc on anything except their platforms. Really which is more important? Fscking hypocrits!!!
From the recently posted C|Net article about AT&T being blocked by AOL:
Despite warning signs, AT&T executives had been hopeful AOL would cooperate, especially given the online leader's recent push for so-called open access to cable networks.
It took nearly everything I had to not break out in a fit of laughter upon reading this. AOL is desperate to get direct access to *some* form of high speed gateway, to the point where they dumped a couple hundred million into *satellite* technology(DirectPC, to be specific. Great for rural areas, but rather horrific to scale--and one way, too).
So here you have AOL, banging on the doors, trying to get the law (very very justifiably!) twisted so that, gee whiz, there can actually *be* ISPs that don't own the direct lines of communication.
Meanwhile, at the very same time, Microsoft is banging on their door, trying to be an IMSP(Internet Messaging Service Provider) that doesn't own all of the direct communication servers.
The communications architectures are publically supported(guess whose land all that fiber's going over!), while the Instant Messanging systems *aren't*, but those are just *details*. On one hand, AOL wants open access to AT&T's property, and on the other, AOL wants closed access when it's their own damn network!
Oh, what a brilliant gambit on the part of AT&T, calling them on an apparent contradiction! I honestly would not be surprised if the only reason AT&T ever partnered with Tribal Voice in the first place was because they realized AOL Just Couldn't Win Both Battles--and either way, their "enemy" would be weakened by either loss.
AOL's counter should be interesting. I know some of the guys at AOL--hell, one of 'em is probably the single smartest networking guy I've ever met. We're talking about a company that, in response to Microsoft's attempts at circumventing their network security, consistently and repeatedly exploited security holes in Microsoft's AIM client, and likely threatened to announce exploits for their client unless Microsoft caved in. (They did.)
AOL is bound to have a truly fascinating response to all this. I, for one, am going to be watching, popcorn in hand.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
First off, it is very thoughtful of Slashdot editors to tell us who is right and who is wrong, without their expertise we might actually have to form our own opinions on the matter.
This is quite simple in my opinion, AOL provides the IM message service which it AFAIK created. In return for this free service AOL recieves money from the advertising banner it flashes across the screen. The key issue here is this. This is _AOL'S_ software. Other companies want to walk in, grab a hold of their large userbase, and walk away with it. Now if these companies were half as inventive as they were greedy, they'd create their own chat network. But of course not. The scream of "Open standards" quickly rallies slashdotters into a frenzy before they look at the issue here. AOL _created and maintain AIM_ it is _theirs_ nobody has the right to tell them what standards they should and shouldn't use. Now if these companies wish to make an open standard for their _own_ chat network, heck, more power to them. Personally I must say that AIM is one of the best pieces of software I've ever seen, it's fast, it's not filled with useless options, the advertisemens aren't annoying popups, etc.
Microsoft was in the right on this one - a standard does need to be made, by an industry-wide group.
... they should have found a better way to do it.
... email, but instead of setting up my own mail server, I hacked into yours and pointed all my users to it, then when you fixed your server so I couldn't get in, I hacked into it again to give my users free use of a resource I don't own, maintain, or hold accountability for?
When did hacking into a network and leeching it's resources for your own gain become a valid action when striving for industry wide standards?
I'd like to see standardized IM as much as anyone, but saying Microsoft is right is a bit far fetched. Microsoft is wrong for hacking into AOL's IM infrastructure after access was denied and AOL is wrong for exploiting their own client software to keep MS out
What if I wanted to get in on this exploding new technology called
And don't respond back with "email is an open standard, while IM is not" because that's not my point, my point is MSN HAS their own IM infrastructure and could have used it, but they decided to leech on the resources and investment of another company and when they were asked/told/forced to stop, they hacked it again. They are FAR from right in this case.
If a standard needs to be made then they should make it with or without AOL. I don't see why AOL should have to cooperate and I don't see why AOL is wrong for not cooperating. Gee, maybe its because AOL has the most customers and MS wants those customers too? Thats most likely why MS wants a standard. When MS is not in charge of something then they want standards.
Who is it helping?
Businesses should battle on the grounds of their tool's design and their service to customers.
All data communication should be
Open
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Standards
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Except maybe those people still in the "Cold War"...
That isn't a valid comparison.
Why not?
You are running a clone of the AOL computer on your computer, and using the servers in the way they were designed. Saying that just because AOL owns the servers they shouldn't need to specify they can only be used with AOL clients is like saying Netscape should expect only Netscape browsers to hit www.netscape.com just because they made the first commercially successful web browser.
As for your property thing - sure, you are right there, but if you owned a large patch of countyside in the middle of a national park, and you didn't put fences around it you shouldn't be surprised if people trespass - and infact they would probably have a good case in court.
Here in Australia, the is an item of common law (inherited from England) that if an area of private property is used for public purposes continuously for a long period of time, a "right of way" is formed, and the owners can no longer stop people from using that area.
That is why places like Adelaide University, which has a large "public" throughfare through the middle close the gates once a year - to stop the public use. Apparently they didn't once, and the final year law students tried (in court) to get a right-of-way.
To get back to the point - perhaps something like this might (or should) apply on the 'Net - and with one netyear = 3realyears... do the sums for yourself.
I'm not really serious about the right-of-way on the Internet, but it does make you think, hey!
Quick Question: What if I am a broke college student in the US and want to talk to my sister in the UK who I haven't seen in a year do I a.) Pay for an expensive phone call everytime I want to talk to her. b.) Send her an email with a bunch of questions on it, wait for her to check her email, then finally respond to me or c.) Carry on a real-time conversation using an instant messaging service.
I don't know about you, but my kid sister and I tried option B and it sucked and we are now pretty happy with option C especially since Yahoo got Voice Chat and i can thus literally talk to my sister for free.
Bad Command Or File Name
I certainly agree that there needs to be a standard. And I applaud Microsoft for saying so considering all of their media coverage, no matter what Microsoft's real perverted intentions were. And, lo-and-behold, there is an industry group workign on the standard as we speak. Let's just hope they adopt it. But, I do have a list of complaints I've seen with current IM-like products that I think should be addressed so they don't get worked into a standard. Stock/News/Weather tickers: There is a time and a place for these. I simply don't want special features cluttering my screen, memroy and disk when I'd rather use a third-party stock-ticker from elsewhere. Just don't put it in the protocol. Let the indvidual IM client software add what they want, btu keep it out of the protocol. Advertisements: Again, keep them out of the protocol. Names: OK, this really has to do with client-sofwtare only, but I'd sure like to be able to put aliases on the names in my buddy list. I can never remember who GoldenFry77 is. I'd rather see an alias as "John Smith from Work" and have the client software use GoldenFry77 in the background.
IETF's IMPP Working group (charter) Maybe this was mentioned deeper in someones thread, but all the same i figured I would point out that there is a standard being developed. Last I heard the group was getting fairly close to having a spec.
Careful, AT&T will charge you a 12.95 per month "privelage-to-use-a-service-from-us-gods-on-earth" fee.
Oh yeah, $0.12 a minute during the day for IM's within Canada and the U.S., $0.07 during nights and weekends, and $0.45 a minute overseas.
Screw AT&T and all their long-distance buddies (read MCI, Sprint, etc).
You want to legislate a computer standard?
Oh man... read your history books!
I totally, absolutly disagree with you. I understand the comparison with telephones, but the Internet is a new game.
Let the market work it out - if one company loses a couple of $mil on the wrong standard, that's no big deal. It's not like they were rolling out incompatible telephone wiring.
It is a little annoying for consumers, but it doesn't cost them anything except convenience, and it allows new products and protocols to develop in ways a legislated standard wouldn't.
Anyway.. what country would you legislate in? What's to stop the non-compliant messageing servers moving to somewhere that has a concept of intellectual freedom?
The key issue here is this. This is _AOL'S_ software. Other companies want to walk in, grab a hold of their large userbase, and walk away with it. Now if these companies were half as inventive as they were greedy, they'd create their own chat network. But of course not. The scream of "Open standards" quickly rallies slashdotters into a frenzy before they look at the issue here. AOL _created and maintain AIM_ it is _theirs_ nobody has the right to tell them what standards they should and shouldn't use.
The key issue here is this. This is _AT&T's_ fibre. Other companies want to walk in, grab a hold of their large broadband base, and walk away with it. Now if these companies were half as inventive as they were greedy, they'd create their own broadband network. But of course not. The scream of "high bandwidth for everyone" quickly rallies slashdotters into a frenzy before they look at the issue here. AT&T _created and maintain their broadband network _ it is _theirs_ nobody has the right to tell them what they should and shouldn't do.
Just playing devil's advocate...feels funny when the shoe's on the other foot doesn't it AOL?
Bad Command Or File Name
The service in any incarnation speeds communication, but no current service excels in all functions. I just cannot imagine that any of these companies share the common goal of developing the best product. It really irks me, though, that big companies like Msft and AT&T try and piggy back on AOL's service while ICQ strive to create its own brand/standard. Standing on the shoulders of giants...
If there were an open standard, then Microsoft would "innovate" and build the client into Windows as part of the operating system. In the fullness of time, just as with browsers, competing clients would be driven out. At that point Microsoft would be free to "enhance" the product making it incompatible with non-Windows systems. AOL is certainly aware of this possibility and that is why they (rightly) will not go to an open standard.
...and it's called "IRC". Internet Relay Chat already provides all of the features of the various IM clients and web-based chat pages. You can share files; you can be notified when certain people leave/join channel(s); etc. Too bad there's no cutesy flower icon, or "bing-bong" every time someone /messages you, otherwise it'd be the Next Killer App(tm).
And there's even an experimental RFC (1459) that describes the protocol! You can't get more standard than the IETF!!
Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
It is not clear that AOL has a right to decide who should and should not have access to their servers for purposes of sending messages to their clients. For legal purposes, AOL should be treated as if it is a "common carrier" of telecommunications services. In many ways AOL is the modern equivalent of a local telephone service provider and should have the same duties and responsibilites. Many other posters have analogized this dispute as one where one phone system cannot talk to another. They are more right than they may know. Your local Bell may "own" the circuit switching equipment, but that doesn't mean they can deny access to the that equipment by AT&T or MCI/Sprint.
I just recieved the newest beta version of Millenium here at work, (4.90.2419 for those out there that are keeping count) and something very interesting installed itself by default. You got it: MSN instant messanger.
Now, let me pose this question: If it comes with the computer, why download another application? Seems to me that, standards or no standards (or anti-trust lawsuit or otherwise), MS is back to it's old, dirty tricks. Think: Internet Explorer.
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rJames.org - illustration
The Post article (and others I have seen) say that the there is(was) documentation on the AOL site which details how IM works. AT&T and MS both used this info to make their clients compatible. Anybody have the URL for this page? Or know if it was taken down?
As was pointed out in other posts we have millions of users using each of the IM packages that are already available. If we tried to combine ICQ,AIM,yahoo, etc... into one big messenger service it would be huge and unwieldy. Gone would be the days of picking a meaningful name on AIM or having a number you can actually memorize on ICQ...
Sure it would be nice to unite all the people who only stick to one IM program or another but I personally have settled on AIM based on who I talk to the most and I kind of like that it isn't as huge and crowded as something like ICQ
Josh
The fundemental principle underlying instant messaging schemes is identical to that underlying office productivity software. The software is *inherently* worthless and becomes worthwhile if and only if there is a critical mass of people who use it.
You can say the same thing about the telephone.
The real issue is not whether standards are neccesary (they aren't at this point and won't be beneficial until the technology matures) but whether companies have the right to use the networks of other companies.
Standards are beneficial, and if we waited until the technology matures we would never get anywhere. Heck, the Internet wouldn't exist because the standards are still immature and need serious improvement. Creating a standard does not mean there will be lock in. Standards, particularly well-developed ones that are inherently extensible, can evolve and develop (HTML 1.0 --> 4.0 --> XHTML).
On your second point, it is not clear what the limits should be on one company "using" the networks of other companies. What does "using" mean anyway? When I make a long distance call with AT&T from home I am "using" SNET's local switching equipment. SNET has no right to prevent that even though SNET "owns" the network. AOL (and other ISPs) are in a similar position. AOL and ISPs in general should have very strict limitations on what traffic they can be permitted to restrict. I favor a common carrier model, of course.
...wouldn't it be wonderful if there was some open-source, open-server, non-commercialized community for chatting, where anyone could use any client or roll their own, which was compatible with any machine because it effectively worked on a pre-existing port (say telnet?) that allowed file transers, private and public chats, notifications when friends join, use of name and domain instead of random numbers...
Oh, wait, it's IRC!
Seriously, tho--what about an ueberclient that incorporated/stole from/abused the other clients and enabled just one client to talk on all different networks (like Orac and other IRC bots linking different IRCnets)?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I'll stick with what works for me for real-time chat.
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I wonder why people would use at&t IM or AOL IM. Everybody I know use ICQ. And why the IETF isn't preparing a standard for instant messenger ?
I personally have had 3 ICQ numbers, only one of which I currently use. A friend of mine even went to the bother of reregistering about 10 times to get a "nice" ICQ number. it's like saying page hits equals number of people interested.
After all: AT&T steadfastly refuses to let AOL "on to" its cable and broadband networks, right? So where does AT&T get off thinking they can just walk in and "hack" AOL's servers?
AT&T used to be one of my favorite service providers. I was actually rooting for them acquiring MediaOne. (MediaOne is/was real close to wiring my neighborhood.) But ever since AT&T started with this nonsense of not allowing a customer to select the ISP of their choice, and then when they turned around a made special accommodations to allow Microsoft (of all companies!) to invest US$5bn in exchange for a wider deployment of Wince-driven set-top boxes, AT&T has become persona non grata for me.
Their recent behavior has caused me to change LD providers (after being a +20 year customer) and to immediately remove them from the running when I recently selected a new wireless provider.
This most recent behavior has only served to reinforce my policy of avoiding doing business with AT&T when I can.
And listen up, AT&T: I also select service providers for the Corporation for which I work.
Actually, a nit-picky point of clarification... Instant Messenger was created by MCIWorldCom (not sure if it was pre-merger or not) and is exclusively licensed to AOL.
Avery
Editor, ScowlZine
Avery
Editor, ScowlZine
"A quarter-pound of hostility and a pickle spear on the side"
if you couldn't call your friend's house because they were using Microsoft Phone and you had AOL's You've Got A Phone. Sometimes standards are a good thing.
Interesting you use the phone analogy; this is a little ditty I wrote some long night over the summer.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
weren't they or mozilla working on a messeger that could connect to any of the other systems out there?
-ta dah-
The issue may seem simple, but it is not. While libertarianism may seem an attractive solution, it ignores the economic realities of the IM market. Like telephone services, network effects play a big role. The more people use a single IM service, the more valuable that IM service becomes. IM is a classic example of a protocol that will, of practical necessity, coalesce around a single standard. It is economically inefficient for there to be multiple standards, and the lsoing standards will not last long (or if they do, will be only marginal players). That being the case, it is not clear at all that a proper legal regime should permit a single corporation to monopolize the resulting stndard. Nor is it clear that AOL can keep the standard proprietary, having made it freely available on the Internet for anyone to use (and not just AOL subscribers).
There has been quite nice systems for sending instant messages, chatting, etc for *many* years before there was even the first of these utterly lame media hyped Instant Messengers around. Why the ***K (yes, duck. or then maybe not.) couldn't we all just use them and teach the morons in M$ Windows Land (a bit like the Disney Land as far as I can noticed.) use them too?
This reminds me of something I was thinking about yesterday. AOL bought ICQ almost over a year ago. And they still haven't done anything with it. What are their plans for ICQ?
I wouldn't mind giving up the terrible security that ICQ has :(
The number of people I know who've had their ICQ accounts 'liberated' from them, with almost no response from the ICQ 'developers'.
Does anyone remember the unix commands 'write' (which wrote a single line of text on a recipient's terminal) and unix 'talk' (which opened a one-on-one chat session)? I used to use these utilities a lot, and had many conversations via them.
Seems to me that these form all the standards you need for an instant messaging system. Just code up a GUI on Windoze for them, and you've got an established free standard IM service. I still don't see why everyone's chasing AOL over this.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Hands down Gerry's icq is the best of all the instant messengers out there. (www.gerryicq.com) The best feature being the history window.
I think a lot of people have forgotten this, but there are actually TWO AIM protocols that can communicate with each other.
OSCAR is the original AIM protocol, and is mostly binary. The official AIM clients use it, and I believe so did MS Mess.
Then there's TOC - A trimmed-down (sort-of) version of OSCAR that uses almost all ASCII - it was designed to be easy to write third-party clients for. TOC clients include TiK, TnT, gAIM, and a few others. The TOC protocol and TiK clients were GPLed by AOL at some point in time. (Before which they had a free license that was quite nice, amazing for AOL at the time.)
If AT&T used the TOC protocol, AOL is heavily in the wrong on this one for blocking clients on a protocol that they opened. If they used OSCAR when TOC was available like MS did, then they deserve to get nailed.
Also, AOL's actions regarding the TiK/TOC pages are definately underhanded. AOL has simply removed the pages without any explanation, while leaving the TOC servers running fine and the TICTOC mailing lists active with no explanation. No one can get any sort of answer from AOL.
Immediately after the MS Mess incident was resolved, the TiK page reappeared briefly, announcing TiK 1.0 in early December, but then it disappeared again. (Before the AT&T thing...)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Not that I necessarily disagree, but Hemos, shouldn't editorial comments be made in the COMMENTS section of the article rather than the one intended for NEWS? Slashdot is never going to gain any respect if you posters can't keep from drenching every article in your opinions as if yours any more valid than those of the rest of us. Keep the news reserved for facts.
--neil
EveryBuddy already has support for AIM, ICQ, and now Yahoo! in the cvs code. There should be a new release (and a new web site) this weekend.
EveryBuddy's web site.
Support for MS Messenger is planned, work is just starting on that. Any other services that people would like to see in EveryBuddy?
I downloaded the I M Here software last night to try it out (my girlfriend uses AIM to chat so I use it to chat with her). Everytime I tried to logon, the little AIM icon would flash green (logged on) and then go back to red (logged off). My AIM client worked just fine though. Looks like AOL is already blocking it.
The problem is that MS, AT&T, AOL, or Joe's Bait Shot FishBuddies IM don't really care if their users can talk to users on a "competing" system. They want people using their app on the desktop...once everyone is using your app you own the standard and lets face it once their is a standard on the desktop it just allows one more conduit to shove advertising down our throats.
There is no such thing as a free internet service so we will be paying one way or the other.
Right now we have a choice on what IM platform we use...If most of our friends are on ICQ we will use ICQ if not we won't it's that simple...IMHO an IM standard will only hurt us in the long run...When have you known AOL, MS, AT&T or any other $$$$ grubbing corporation to look out for your best interests? Never? So why trust them to do it now.
Talk to who you want use whatever system you want....it's your right.
Internet King Fugu
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Yeah, And you also have Op wars, channel takeovers, servers refusing your connection..Laaaaaaaag, and everyone on the network knows your ip...syn floods anyone? Don't get me wrong, I use and love IRC too, but it isn't for the uninitiated. Aim is a nice solution for average folks. Personally I check aim every now and then to see if any of my family or friends are on, then direct them to an IRC channel if I want them to join on a public discussion.
How would you like it if you were paying for a server and network resources for a piece of software you wrote. You help pay for part of it through little banner adds that popup in your client software which isn't getting quiet the exposure you promised your advertisers. Now someone is clonning your client and steeling those oppurtunities of click throughs away from you as well as your customer base.
/notify to help you create a "Buddy" list. I think your only delima here would be what irc network to use.
What I'm saying up there is it is 100% understandable why AOL wouldn't want to standardize it's service. Now why it wouldn't want to liscence it to other companies is beyond me but I'm sure they have thier reasoning. Besides isn't there already a standard that pretty much does everything AIM does now, (IRC).
Isn't it just a simple rewrite of a client so that it uses the
IM services reside on AOL's network, and even the user name are based on AOL screennames. Meaning that any IM clone is using the AOL network without permission from AOL. I thing AOL is in the right here. Not that I don't use Everybuddy, since I cannot get the AIM TCL client to work, but if I could, I wouldn't be using a clone because it is not right. I mean, that would be like Burger King deciding to sell their Whoppers in the lobby of a McDonalds restraunt. (Strange comparision, I know).
You forgot your less_than - forward_slash - A -greater_than. Look at your page source.
Actually, a nit-picky point of clarification... Instant Messenger was created by MCIWorldCom (not sure if it was pre-merger or not) and is exclusively licensed to AOL.
I think this would be a great surprise to all the AIM developers down the hall from me. AIM was conceived, designed and developed at AOL.
No. AOL owns the servers. The users are allowed to use the client to connect to (enter) the servers.
Think of it like this. AOL gives users a key to get into their house. MS starts making similar keys that will also open AOL's house, and taking credit for all the nifty stuff in AOL's house as MS's. AOL comes home the next day and finds hordes of MS users in his house, drinking his beer, eating his food, and taking too long in the bathroom. This pisses off AOL, becase he only invited his friends over, not all of MS's friends. So in the end, AOL changes the locks on his doors so that the keys he gives out work, but the keys MS makes don't. Where is the injustice in that?
0 1 - just my two bits
Yeah, the jabber.org site isn't feeling too healthy at the moment. That's actually on schedule for fixing today :)
We've been pouring 100% of our concentration into the code the last month, and most of the core developers are on irc.openprojects.net in #jabber.
'pologize for the site probs!
Jer
The "right of way" thing applies in the States here as well, at least where I'm from. The public school I went to has a very large campus, with several roads that proved to be very nice shortcuts to get to the other side of town (shaved a mile or 2 off your trip, depending on where you were headed). Every summer, they had to block off the road for a few days so that it would continue to be considered a private road.
But their server should be able to talk to OTHER servers.
That works for the IM part, but I suspect there is a scaling problem when you have a few million simultaneous users, and every server has to send login/logout data to every other server for buddy lists. That gets into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of messages per second per server pair. That's tough with the latencies on a worldwide network.
Jabber attempts to address this by creating a non centralized IM system
As far as I can tell from the FAQ, Jabber doesn't really decentralize the back end. It seems to be a "middleware" server that sits between the Jabber client and all the proprietary back-end servers. To your client, it must seem to be the server, and to the real IM servers, it appears to be just another client. I'm not sure how it gets all the buddy data from the servers, but it's possible that at high volumes it runs into the same problem.
What you described is what the IETF and the RFC mechanism is for.
In fact, they already have a
working group on the Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol (impp)
What's really needed is one basic, open, interoperable standard. Think of email. Every ISP runs an SMTP server for their customers, and any ISP can email any other ISP's customers. The network is set up so that individual nodes can figure out where things go by MX records and other standardized mechanisms.
We need something like that for IM.
Since there is no financial incentive to allow your competitors to access your servers (and you customers), it seems to me that the only way around this is a global service run on a not for profit basis, that allows _anyone_ to use it with any client they like (ie, open the message protocols to the public).
NO NO NO! First of all, if there were "no financial incentive to let competitors access your servers", there would be no such thing as email.
Do you remember how back in the eighties, there were all these proprietary email services, and you could only send somebody a message if you were on the same service as them? Remember Compuserve, MCIMail, ATTMail, Fidonet, and then there were those internet people in the universtities.
Ever heard of Metcalfe's law? Bob Metcalfe, the former CEO of 3COM and inventor of "Ethernet" networking technology is credited with this idea, commonly referred to as Metcalfe's Law:
(Paraphrased) The power of a network increases exponentially with each additional node...
That's why it made sense for everybody to drop the proprietary email protocols, and use the open standard. That's why it's in everybody's interest to have one unified, decentralized, open IM protocol that everyone can use.
Secondly, this is NOT an area where governments belong.
-James
Yes a common carrier must allow others to connect, but they still have to pay to use the services.
AOL should be allowed to disallow any access that is not 'paid' for, even if their payment is only using the ICQ software.
I don't agree with the common carrier arguement, but even under that arguement AOL is right
It isn't a standards problem. AOL published the protocol, which is why open-source groups, Yahoo, and Microsoft were able to write AIM-compatible applications in the first place.
There is a difference between protocol standardization and free access. Just because Telnet is a standard does not give you the right to log into any Telnet-speaking computer and use it however you like -- you must conform to the administrative policies of the computer's owner.
Similarly, being able to speak the AIM protocol does not give you the right to log on to AOL's server network and use it without conforming to the administrative policies of the server owner. The server owner is AOL, and its policy is you cannot use the MS client on its network.
Microsoft wants people using its client and AIM to be able to talk to each other? Then Microsoft can set up a network of AIM-compatible computers and publish the address. AIM, after all, allows you to specify the address of the server you wish to log into.
This has plenty of precedent. The Realtime Blackhole List is a prime example of standards-compliant messages being blocked from servers because the servers' owners do not want to accept the messgaes. Password-restricted FTP is another. Just because something is connected to the Internet does not mean you have the right to access it.
I have to side with AOL on the thing with Microsoft, at least. Here's why:
E-mail is a peer-to-peer protocol, while AOL Instant Messenger is very much client-server. With SMTP, you set up a box running Sendmail, and if you want to send e-mail to someone else, it contacts their server and sends the message. If they want to send you a mesage, their server contacts yours and sends you a message. It's not at a ll centralized - except for the involvement of root nameservers in making MX records available.
With AIM, on the other hand, all messages are relayed through one server network. All users must authenticate themselves on that network, and their information is broadcast by that network to other clients. If I want to send you a message, I send it to AOL, and AOL forwards it to you. If you reply, you send your reply back to AOL, and AOL forwards it to me.
My experience with AIM has been extremely positive. It can navigate through extremely restrictive firewalls, it makes it impossible for other users to find my IP address (except in certain cases, which it usually warns about), and if someone annoys me, I can make them go away. There is (at least limited) support for a huge variety of platforms (I've seen screen shots of an AIM clone running on an Apple IIgs, Freshmeat listed an ncurses version, I've heard there's an Emacs plug-in, and there's a Java applet version at http://toc.oscar.aol.com/). And, they continue to actively improve it, adding new features and fixing bugs.
Here's another problem: AOL has two different AIM protocols, called TOC and OSCAR. The Mac and Windows clients use OSCAR, which is binary and proprietary. TiK, Gaim, and all the other IM clones use TOC, which is open, text-based, and documented. Microsoft could have used the TOC protocol, but instead they took the time to reverse-engineer OSCAR.
It sounds like AT&T is using TOC.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
The structure that AT&T is trying to setup, of allowing connections to other servers, is very much like the free, open alternative that the Jabber team is creating. Although we are not creating a client only solution. We have a server based around a XML stream protocol that allows pluggable transports for different protocols, with clients for almost every platform. This allows for an extremely extensible system. Currently we have betas for AIM (libfaim has not been blocked throughout this entire ordeal of blocked clients), ICQ, and MSN is in the works. I have just completed a group chat (similar to ICQ) module as well.
Although the side of having an IM client that can connect to a lot of others is appealing, Jabber is much much more. We have plans to jabberify many programs (CVS, Abiword, Bugzilla, and more). By doing so the power of these programs increases in many orders of magnitude. Just imagine multiple working on a document in Abiword at the exact same time, or CVS automagically pushing you updates, or Bugzilla yelling at you when you get a new urgent bug? It all sounds really appealing to me.
Being free and open source, Jabber has the potential to be so much to the internet, and help settle some of these annoying arguments that a lot of the corporate players are having. Come visit us on IRC in #jabber on openprojects network or just visit the web site.
Bill Gates bent Ma Bell over a couch and refused to stop until she agreed to making the at&t client access the aim network.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
This is exactly what happens every time somebody cooperates with Microsoft! Why is PrimeEnd the only one who sees it? You get in bed with Microsoft, YOU GET SCREWED!
Prior to this thing with microsoft there happened to be an open source IM client by AOL. Now you can still download it from other peoples sites but the AOL site and development has been put on hold. Just when you think the IM wars was over and the page might return, BAM this happens. The client is written in tcl/tk and can run on any platform that can run the scripts. The protocol was totally published, and if you look at the files in the distrobution it still tells you about all the functions. Annoying thing about this is whenever AOL changes something the tik servers just happen to loose all of our buddy lists. But, since the developers of tik let you save your buddy list locally and/or on their servers some of us have backup. Another thing, tik does not have adds (and happened to have features that AIM2 didnt even have.) I just wish it was back on the burner for AOL because without the page there and their push for development of the package, not much has happened.
_joshua_
But when you make a call via AT&T, AT&T must pay SNET for originating the call, and pay the local phone company on the other end for terminating the call.
I'm sure if AT&T and Microsoft wanted to pay AOL to allow their customers to access AOL's IM servers, they could work something out.
The problem is Microsoft and AT&T want a free ride without doing anything to benefit AOL.
The analogies with phone compainies don't really hold up though, because they are regulated monopolies, where AOL is not. AOL may have a large chunk of market share, but there isn't really much of a barrier to entry for other companies wanting to develop their own, independent, IM systems. Other compaines just don't want to have to wait to build their user base like AOL did.
Something that's not been made clear to me is why IRC won't work as an instant messaging platform. Near as I can see, it has everything required - file transfer (DCC), buddy lists (notify), chat (duh), private messaging (duh), and a lot of other stuff as well.
So why dosen't everyone just make an IRC-based instant messenger?
It is not as if these are much more than a novelty or a nuisance. The only reason I ever turn mine on is if I am wasting time.
You can use e-mail for stuff that the other people need to see. Or, if you want standards, get IRC and if you want privacy, invest in a free irc server.
The mere presence of the discussion on standards of a toy is a waste of time.
But, if you only used it for instant messaging (read: keep out of channels), and kept your nick secret, then who's going to find your IP?
AOL has control of two major "standards" today. AIM (I still don't know why you'd use it), and ICQ. AOL, wanting its own monopoly, has gone and tweaked both protocols all they could. However, the ICQ protocol is still open because of the older v3 and v4 connection clients. However, I've noticed recently that Licq and ICQ 98 (which don't have the latest weird byte-swapping techniques that ICQ 99b uses) seem to have trouble connecting to the network.
Would it be so hard to take the most flexible protocl (ICQ v5), change it around a bit (ie: make it easier to impliment), and produce that as a standard? I'd certainly like to see that RFC. Then we can be free to choose our own clients, ala choice for browsers (well, none for MS users, see "Millenium" installing MSN Messenger by default).
Anyone willing to write an RFC about this?
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
In the article it said that Tribal Voice was helping AT&T with its messager app. If I remember correctly, about 2.5-3 years ago, wasnt Tribal Voice the company that made PowWow? i dont know if anyone ever really used it, then ICQ came out shortly afterward. PowWow had nifty built-in voice chat as well as all the text-chat and contact list stuff. Its still around but doesn't get mentioned much.
Why is it that everyone makes such big deals over large corporations making IM app clones, but no one really says anything when there are -many- ICQ and AIM clones/clients for (example) Linux. Some people have mentioned Yahoo Pager.. I've never used it personally, but it seemed like a pathetic attempt to join the IM-bus after the success of ICQ and AIM.
Thanks about it for now.
Any open protocols should include measures such as encryption so that communications can be kept secure.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
I can see why this got flamebait... I made one phrase kinda unclear.
Should read: If AT&T used the TOC protocol, AOL is in the wrong, blah blah. If AT&T used OSCAR, they deserve what's happening. ("They" was pretty ambiguous in my post...)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
there is already a standard for IM'ers it's called ICQ!!!
But more importantly, all of this is MOOT. There is already a free open protocol for "Instant Messaging" -- it's called IRC. Think about it for a minute, what did we all do before we had "buddy lists" or "contact lists" ... we all camped on same network as our friends, and they could /msg or dcc us ANYTIME they wanted.
I've been knocking around the idea of creating a 'clone' of AIM or ICQ, something that works the same on the gui level, but uses an irc network. On the protocol level, when i sign on, i JOIN into a channel (having my own nick) lets say #shro0m. Then I also JOIN the channels for all of the people on my contact list (who have allowed me onto the 'contact lists'). So i join into the channels #ben and #dewb. so when dewb's client sees the JOIN on his personal channel, 'shro0m' pops up in his contact list as "online". Away status is already part of most(all) ircd's. you could even have html code in the PRIVMSG
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
I'd say that it's Mirabilis' turf, not ICQ. The size of the user bases of ICQ and IM may be comparable, but ICQ was there first.
Diehard