Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Software Businesses

Yahoo Shutting Out Third-Party IM Clients? 442

Posted by simoniker from the sound-of-strangled-yodeling dept.
prostoalex writes "Following the lead of America Online's previous attempts and MSN's actions, Yahoo is planning an update that may cut out third-party providers like Trillian or Gaim. If you're a current Trillian user with a valid Yahoo ID, you probably noticed the new welcome message: 'Yahoo! is upgrading to its newest version of Yahoo! Messenger on September 24, 2003. The upgrade is part of an ongoing process to continually enhance the overall quality of the Yahoo! Messenger service for our millions of users'." Update: 09/18 01:17 GMT by S : Trillian has just released a patch that updates the IM software "...to the newest Yahoo! and MSN protocols, to remove the recent upgrade messages."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Yahoo Shutting Out Third-Party IM Clients? More

Yahoo Shutting Out Third-Party IM Clients?

Comments Filter:

  • Bad move? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The Evil Plush Toy ( 513809 ) <evilplushtoy AT yahoo DOT com> on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:13PM (#6990696)
    I think that these companies should support third party applications or, atleast, ports to differnt operating systems. Anything that expands your marketshare, right?

    • Re:Bad move? (Score:3, Informative)

      by ejaw5 ( 570071 )
      Yahoo! and AOL does provide Windows, Mac, and Linux/Unix clients. Both also offer online Java clients for use on public computers.

    • Re:Bad move? (Score:3, Informative)

      by merlin_jim ( 302773 )
      I think that these companies should support third party applications or, atleast, ports to differnt operating systems.

      Yahoo has had for some time a Java Client... does that count?


    • I agree with what you say, but Trillian is a company, they actually profit off other peoples networks and so I dont agree with Trillian.

      I'd like to see Trillian sued or driven out of business myself. Look, if Trillian were open source freeware who would care? I dont think MSN and Yahoo would be doing this if it were just GAIM or even Jabber, the reason this happens with Trillian is because Trillian is a company, its that simple.

      I would do the same thing if some other company were getting rich off my net

      • Re:Yeah but Trillian steals their revenue. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @10:30PM (#6991172)
        Whether or not you agree with it, the free market produces products. If these products are in demand, then the producers succeed.

        Case in point is the IM world. I, for one, despise each and every official IM client out there. ICQ used to be usable, back before they started naming the versions by years (I have a UIN under 1,000,000 so that should be some indication of how long I've used it).

        Yahoo Messenger is fucking annoying, doing such lovely things as dragging me out of other applications with its 'user is online' messages and popping new message windows to the front.

        MSN has an ugly interface as well as being fairly resource-intensive for just an IM program.

        Finally, I have friends on all these networks. I don't want to run 3 different programs.

        So what has demand created? Jabber, Trillian, Fire, etc etc. Is it fair for the network providers who are letting people get onto their networks for no charge? Not really, but them's the breaks. Does it deprive them of ad revenue? Probably, though I suspect from my observations of friends and family that most people use the official clients.

        My point is that the demand is there. Demand makes product. In the open-source world, it's the itch that someone wants to scratch. In the commercial world, it's the potential to tap into a market that has been created by demand. You have this opinion that making money from another person's product is wrong, but that's just idiotic. Why should the rules be any different for the people who aren't making money? If you want to argue that people shouldn't be allowed to connect to a person's service without official software, then don't come crying to /. when the open source and freeware developers get shut down or out too.

        • Re:Yeah but Trillian steals their revenue. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by MrWa ( 144753 ) on Thursday September 18, 2003 @01:29AM (#6991879) Homepage
          My point is that the demand is there. Demand makes product. In the open-source world, it's the itch that someone wants to scratch. In the commercial world, it's the potential to tap into a market that has been created by demand. You have this opinion that making money from another person's product is wrong, but that's just idiotic.

          So, if the demand was there and people liked to watch movies in YOUR living room it would be perfectly acceptable for me to sell tickets to everyone so they can come and use your TV. You, of course, get nothing out of this but you need to maintain your house clean and orderly.

          Millions of people go into McDonald's a year - should I be able to sell my own hamburgers inside of the resteraunt if the demand is there? It isn't fair that they should get all the profit from those people going there.

          Don't come crying to /. just because you can't use someone elses network with paying for it when I can't use your long distance service for free.

          • Don't come crying to /. just because you can't use someone elses network with paying for it when I can't use your long distance service for free.

            You're lucky that the rest of the world isn't so shortsighted. In a world where nobody at all cared whether or not networks were open, these attempts to entrap IM users would be penny-ante stuff - the real crooks would be purchasing the street in front of your house and charging you ten bucks every time you needed to go to work or buy groceries.

            Ask yourself: "A
      • IM providers deliberately create barriers between their networks to generate revenue by advertizing; then they generate more revenue to sell you a "business version" without the ads.

        Everyone but the IM providers would be better off with a global IM standard that wasn't controlled by a single corporate identity. ISPs could easily take the load of running an IM server, and fair competition in the client market would be possible.

        IM could be a service like email, but with a modern protocol and without the s

        • Well, considering that some heavyweight companies created it, I'd consider it their prerogative to keep it proprietary. Certain things in life, electricity, water, etc. are public utilities because they are necessary for basic survival. IM doesn't, IMO, fall into that category, nor come anywhere near it.
      • Funny, Trillian doesn't profit from my use of the IM networks.

        You see, I use their freeware version of Trillian, which is still a superior product to the original IM clients (at least for my use).

        Most Trillian users do the same. Maybe it's because we're cheap, maybe it's because we don't need those features.

        But the money they make out of the "pro" version is evidently from people who demand more features than just "accessing other people's networks". And those needs are obviously not satisfied by the mar
    • If they supported third-party applications, those wouldn't be third-party applications, would they? It's up to the third-party applications to track new versions if they want to play. Yahoo doesn't change things so often that it's too much trouble.

  • Trillian is OK. (Score:4, Informative)

    by AtOMiCNebula ( 660055 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:13PM (#6990706) Journal
    Trillian Pro 1.0d was just released that fixes the MSN and Yahoo! issues. Trillian Pro 2.0 (final) has no problems.

    Wow, I love it when people don't use the latest versions ;)

  • Yeah, that sucks but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:14PM (#6990711)
    where is the economic incentive to provide an IM service that everybody in the world can use? Servers do cost money... any ideas on how one could fund this?
    • What exactly is the economic incentive to provide an IM service at all? It's not like anyone with half a brain pays any attention to the ads in ICQ, and half the rest of 'em are all under 15 and don't have lots of pocket cash anyway.

    • Re:Yeah, that sucks but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:18PM (#6990747)
      There's got to be more economic incentive to provide a service that works for everyone than there is to provide a service that only works for some people.

      • Re:Yeah, that sucks but... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by El ( 94934 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:40PM (#6990932)
        Let's see... AOL provides an IM service for AOL users to leverage AOL sales. If they let just anybody connect to the servers, what incentive would you have to shell out $27/month for AOL. Ditto for MSN. Not sure what Yahoo's econmic model is, but presumably it has something to do with advertising that you don't see if you don't use their client. Let's put it this way: how long could the phone company stay in business if all calls were free and their only revenue stream was from selling phones... but anybody else could connect a phone not made by them to the network? Think they might have some powerful incentive to force you to use their phones?
        • "If they let just anybody connect to the servers, what incentive would you have to shell out $27/month for AOL."

          Um, anyone *can* connect. The AIM client is free. How does AOL benefit from people using AIM proper over a third-party app, with the exception of a small amount of advertisement?

          • Re:Yeah, that sucks but... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Feztaa ( 633745 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @10:02PM (#6991048) Homepage
            Well, there's a network effect that happens with IM protocols; if nobody uses AIM, there's no reason for anybody else to use it. The only reason I have an AIM account on my gaim buddy list is because I have a couple friends who use AIM. Theoretically, those people using AOL would derive less value from the service if they weren't able to chat with me.

            Coincidentally, I don't have a YIM account, and I don't need one because I don't know anybody who does. Therefore, YIM loses.
            • And I agree... so by locking out the third-party programs which they aren't even losing money to or anything, they are decreasing their user base harming it further. Which is why I don't get why they wouldn't *welcome* third-party software.
      • There's got to be more economic incentive to provide a service that works for everyone than there is to provide a service that only works for some people.

        Actually no. Many products which don't solve an immediate problem or satisfy a basic need, only sell if not everyone has access to them.

        It's the old principle: People buy things that a) are necessary b) are useful c) are comfortable d) cause envy by the neighbours. Sometimes a service loose its marketability after it is provided to everyone.

    • Re:Yeah, that sucks but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jgisclon ( 707623 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:21PM (#6990786)
      where is the economic incentive to provide an IM service that everybody in the world can use? Servers do cost money...

      There's no economic incentive to operate IRC networks either, yet they continue to thrive.

      Someone out there is willing to donate resources to make it possible.

    • any ideas on how one could fund this?

      Well, if you remember, Microsoft is gearing up to offer MSN Licenses [slashdot.org], which at least offers 3rd party clients like Trillian a solution to their predicament.

      My guess is that such 3rd party clients would recoup the license costs by either selling their user database to advertising companies, or throwing some ads into the client itself. If you want to get RID of the ads, you can buy the professional version (which would also cover the cost of the client license).

      It's

    • Re:Yeah, that sucks but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pimpinmonk ( 238443 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:27PM (#6990829)
      No easy solution, but another interesting problem: people don't use different messengers based on how good their service or technology is, they use what their friends use. Two places I've lived, Boston and New York, both have predominantly AIM users that I've encountered. But in Toronto, MSN Messenger is most common. I would actually prefer ICQ, but I can't make all my friends shift, nor can I tell new acquaintances "what online chat program do you use? Oh, that... why don't you switch to this?" It's just not feasible, so everyone sticks to the same thing.

    • The incentive is that it provides value to your customers, and thus gives them more reason to use your service. (And even your client) The value of an IM system grows with the number of users that have access. So even if you don't allow direct access for other clients, if you let your YIM users talk with AIM or Jabber users, they'll be less likely to leave your service for AIM or Jabber.

      Its only one of the founding principles of the Internet. :P

      As for funding, why bother with a centralized server?

      • Re:Yeah, that sucks but... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by El ( 94934 )
        As for funding, why bother with a centralized server?

        Uh, 'cause most dial-up users IP addresses change every time they log in? Makes 'em a little hard to find with multicasting to everyone in the world. You've got to have a service somewhere to translate the IM name into current IP... after that, sure, the messages can go direct. Remember P2P networks don't let you find a specific user amongst millions connected -- they only let you find one of many thousands of copies of a file, which is much easier.

    • That's why the Jabber model is better. Instead of everyone in the world connecting to AOL's IM servers, you connect to your ISP's Jabber server. If you want to talk to someone, you use addresses like foobar42@aol.com or asdf@someISP.com, just like email. That way, you pay your ISP for the privilege of using their IM servers, the same as email. It's so completely obvious that this model is better that I wonder why Jabber hasn't taken over the world already.
      • It's so completely obvious that this model is better that I wonder why Jabber hasn't taken over the world already.

        Probably for the same reason that Linux hasn't taken over the world already: the Open Source community has a really hard time with marketing.

        If history has shown us anything, it's that any given product can not 'win' on technical merits alone; he who has the most $$$ in his marketing budget wins.

    • Re:Yeah, that sucks but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <mohr.42NO@SPAMosu.edu> on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:45PM (#6990955)
      where is the economic incentive to provide an IM service that everybody in the world can use? Servers do cost money... any ideas on how one could fund this?
      Don't.

      Develop a distributed IM network so that anybody can set up their own server and connect to anybody else using the same protocol, regardless of what server they are connected to (like email, but faster). And there is no requirement to open your server to anybody but yourself. That would be a good IM system.

      Oh wait--it seems someone beat us to it [jabber.org].
      • Yes indeedy, Jabber is good.

        It has other advantages over other protocols:

        1. The protocol is openly documented; any schmuck can write a Jabber client without having to go to pains to reverse engineer a proprietary protocol.

        2. The protocol is based on XML, so it's easily human-readible and readily extensible.

        3. All of the Jabber clients that I know of are open source, with all of the benefits that that entails.

        Though, one of the problems with your argument is that most people's JID's are @jabber.org, so

  • Yea (Score:2, Funny)

    by Raul654 ( 453029 )
    Because not being able to chat with people you could chat with previously is a great sign of "continual enhancement"

    • Re:Yea (Score:2)

      by mph ( 7675 )
      Because not being able to chat with people you could chat with previously is a great sign of "continual enhancement"
      I once saw a sign at a store which read, "To serve you better, we will be closed on (date)."

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:15PM (#6990717)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • As long as... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:15PM (#6990720)
    The upgrade is part of an ongoing process to continually enhance the overall quality of the Yahoo! Messenger service for our millions of users'."

    ....as long as those users agree with our choice of OS and platform. I run OS X and the standard Yahoo! client is lame. It's a cheap port of the windows client. Third party programmers have filled the gap; it's a shame to see Yahoo! cut these clients off in order to preserve the illusion of control.

  • why use IM? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Coneasfast ( 690509 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:16PM (#6990723)
    when IM first became popular and ICQ was the only major one, i used it and there were never any problems, now everyone i know uses something different it just gets to be a big hastle...

    i think ill stick to email and IRC

  • Wishful thinking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by levik ( 52444 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:16PM (#6990724) Homepage
    I am hoping this change won't trigger a new serioes of IM wars. I'm sure that if incompatibility is introduced, Trillian and Co. will be quick to conform - as long as they're not made to attempt to hit a moving target things should be ok.

    But here's wishing that the warning message is just a bunch of smoke to get people to fall in line with the official client.

  • hopefully not shut out (Score:5, Informative)

    by dubiousdave ( 618128 ) <dubiousdave@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:16PM (#6990727) Journal
    According to the article:
    "Third-party clients will likely be affected, but we're trying to communicate with other providers around the common goal of opening up the IM community," she said.
    Hopefully they are sincere about this, and not just trying to spin it. They could possibly try to license access to their network.

  • Why is it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Absurd Being ( 632190 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:17PM (#6990732) Journal
    That "to continually enhance the overall quality" almost always translates to "to make it so that you can't save money by switching to another brand" or "to screw you over by offering less service for the same price"?
    • Because business is "customer driven."

      And they've discovered how easy it is, indeed, to drive them.

      "Baaaaaa! Baaaaaaa!"

      KFG
  • All this protection and hoohah over an IM client. I could come close to understanding it over a secure, enterprise-level videoconferencing version of it, but dang. We're just a bunch of internet users chatting.. get a life, guys.
  • Wonderful, another few years of communication incompatibilities until one winner emerges. The problem with computers is that we need monopolies. Universal standards would work in a perfect world, but you would need an authoritative government implementing them. Corporate monopolies are not an ideal solution, but they are slightly better. My opinions on Microsoft have changed a great deal for the better over the past few years. I used to be as gung ho against the big bad giant corporation as anyone. Bu

    • Re:Annoying for the Consumer (Score:5, Interesting)

      by spektr ( 466069 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:32PM (#6990866)
      Wonderful, another few years of communication incompatibilities until one winner emerges. The problem with computers is that we need monopolies.

      Fighting against each other until only one surviver is left over isn't the only way to live. Cooperation is possible if the players do not assume that they have to kill all the other players to be successful. Strange concept, isn't it?

      Universal standards would work in a perfect world, but you would need an authoritative government implementing them.

      The internet didn't need a government to develop universal standards.
    • Nonsense. Computers don't need monopolies. Monopolies (or near monopolies) lead to predatory business practices (cf. MS) and/or poor software since there's no competition (cf. MS). They also lead to monocultures, which lead to widespread worms and viruses (cf. guess who).

      What we need are uniform standards and protocols. So, one IM protocol just like we have HTTP and HTML. You have your choice of clients and/or networks. That way MS and AOL can still keep bombarding their clients with ads, and people who are

  • They're still open (Score:5, Informative)

    by fliplap ( 113705 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:19PM (#6990761) Homepage Journal
    Oh come on now, the slashdot summary of this article is written like the submitter didn't RTFA.

    It says right in the article that they are trying to work with 3rd party providers to restore compatibility. The actual switch is a week off and I bet they'll be compatible by then. Note that this is nothing like the AOL shut out which has no purpose other than to shut out non-AOL clients
  • Although I hate to see the third party applications being blocked, I can see the view that Yahoo! and the others are taking. This is their service, meant to be used with their clients, in order to gain revenue through advertisements and whatnot. When those clients aren't being used, and the advertisements aren't rolling in the cash, they cut off the moochers.

    I actually don't like Trillian and gAIM, mainly because of the lack of features for MSN that came out in Messenger 6. There's other reasons, I suppo
  • Its only a matter of time before yahoo does the same. people choose thier IM client based on personal preference. Id rather not have 3 IM clients loaded at the same time and cant expect people to switch over from thier preferred IM protocol for me. If they have switched in the past 5 years or more for me, I cannot expect that theyll do so now.
    Theyll make some changes in thier protocol to attempt to prevent 3rd party clients from connecting. itll be a few hours to a few days before there is a patch so that
  • . . . but I will change IM depending on which ones are supported on my OS.

    I'm part of a couple of Yahoo fantasy leagues. I use Yahoo IM to talk to my fellow owners. Now, I don't use any of the paid-for features of Yahoo, but I know my league-mates do. Do Yahoo think that making it harder for people to talk on Yahoo will

    a) Increase the density of users willing to spend money on yahoo, or

    b) Decrease the density of users willing to spend money on yahoo?

    The usefulness of a centralised IM system is the squar

  • Unix client (Score:3, Informative)

    by Karna ( 80187 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:26PM (#6990821)
    The latest Unix client for Yahoo! (1.0.4) was released just recently [yahoo.com]. From the Freshmeat notes [freshmeat.net]:


    The last release of Yahoo! Messenger based on the GTK1.2 codebase, this is mainly a bugfix release with a lot of stability, rendering, and speed fixes. It adds some enhancements and features such as an Addressbook tab, tab-aware URLs, active identities, and many archiving enhancements. More details and information are available via the publicly-accessible Yahoo! group, which provides a mechanism to interact with the Unix client developers.

    The group referenced is here [yahoo.com].

    • Re:Unix client (Score:3, Informative)

      by nutznboltz ( 473437 )
      # pkg_add fbsd4.ymessenger.tgz
      pkg_add: could not find package gtk-1.2.3 !
      pkg_add: could not find package glib-1.2.3 !
      pkg_add: could not find package XFree86-3.3.6 !
      pkg_add: could not find package gdk-pixbuf-0.8.0 !
      pkg_add: could not find package gettext-0.11.1_1 !

      XFree86-3.3.6? Did Darell drop by to give them a hit before they rolled this package?

      The tarball has Sep 15 05:20 2003 datestamps in it.
    • Here's the goods though.......from the EULA (its been awhile since I've read through one....Yikes!!)

      The Service and any necessary software used in connection with the Service ("Software") contain proprietary and confidential information that is protected by applicable intellectual property and other laws. Yahoo grants you a personal, non-transferable and non-exclusive right and license to use the object code of the Software on a single computer; provided that you do not (and do not allow any third party

  • why (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can see the big players like microsoft and aol trying this, but why yahoo. Last I heard they were way behind aim/icq and msn in usage. Right now my gaim has 41 icq users, 27 aim users, 6 jabber users, 5 msn users, and 1 yahoo user. The only thing yahoo stands to accomplish with this is to lose people like me as users, and possible people who want to talk to me.

    Shouldn't yahoo be doing things to try and increase the nubmer of users on their system. Or even trying to shift instant messages to an open s
  • There is an alternative in the offical yahoo messanger UNIX site [yahoo.com]

    Rus

  • If one, just one IM provider. . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:34PM (#6990883)
    shuts out third party clients, people may think they're really sick and won't patronize them.

    If two, two providers do it, in harmony, people may think they're faggots and won't patronize either of them.

    And it three providers do it, three, can you imagine? Three providers shutting out third party clients. People might think it's an orginization.

    And if all, all the IM providers do it, people might think it's a movement.

    And that's just what it is people. The third party IM client anti-trust masacree movement.

    Sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.

    With feeling.

    KFG

  • Fighting a Losing Battle (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RoninM ( 105723 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:35PM (#6990886) Journal
    These companies need to get smart. These protocol changes are going to be reverse engineered. There's just too many people who are too smart and too willing to work in groups for lockout strategies to work. A protocol change won't chase away these guys; it makes them drool.

    What lockouts do, however, is annoy the rest of the user base. Some people won't want to upgrade. Some people don't want to use Yahoo!'s software or can't. Most people don't want to be warned about impending protocol changes every time they login. Almost everyone wants to be able to talk to their friends, regardless of their friends' software choices. These lockouts hurt the people using the official client just as much as everyone else. The only way Yahoo!'s going to stay a step ahead of hackers is to kill their service: repeated protocol changes will do it.

    What needs to happen is cooperation. IM providers can make life easier on developers by offering specs. These benefits trickle down to users, since they always have the latest and greatest. Developers can return the favor to the IM providers by agreeing to introduce branding. The IM provider benefits overall by not threatening its userbase with lockouts, in addition to the publicity (and credibility) boost among geeks and others. "Don't like our software? Yahoo! supports the Open Source and Free Software movements by providing protocol documentation for our popular services. Read more here!" Imagine that!

    One has to wonder if AIM would be faring better had AOL committed to this strategy, rather than going only a quarter of the way.

  • If there is anything at all that qualifies as a right, it's the ability to communicate with others freely. That is why removal of the freedom to communicate is quite possibly the harshest aspect of imprisonment. And that is why most of the free world regards regimes with repressive communication policies as being anti-freedom.

    When a company provides a means of communication as part of their product, disallowing their customers from using that medium to communicate with non-customers is vastly worse than

  • Miranda supports the newest MSN protocol (Score:3, Informative)

    by javajeff ( 73413 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @09:36PM (#6990902)
    Miranda is open source freeware too!

    http://www.miranda-im.org/

  • ROFLMAO!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mnemennth ( 607438 )
    They say they're doing this to protect their subcribers from SPAM?!?!? How obscene is THAT?

    No, they're trying to keep us Trillian (and other similar third-party client) users from using their bug-ridden "service" without paying for it by watching their authorized SPAM.

    Mnem
    "Alien Anal Probes?!? Where do I sign up?"

  • Stupid Question... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ewhac ( 5844 )

    What is it that IM clients do that IRC can't? In other words, why do people bother with proprietary instant messaging systems when IRC (appears to) do the same things, plus a whole lot more?

    Is it the graphical smileys? What?

    Schwab

    • If someone could make an IRC client that acts like an IM client, not a whole lot.

      But why not just use Jabber?
    • I can think of a few...
      1: Network unification: IM has AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, and Jabber. IRC has more networks than I can count. The odds of your friends all being on the right IM network are much better than all being on the same IRC net.
      2: The buddy list. On IRC it's harder to track people coming and going (if they're not in your channel). IM makes it easy to tell who is online no matter who they're talking to.
      3: Fewer opportunites for lamers to ruin/take over your chat. IRC channels are taken ove

    • Re:Stupid Question... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LucidityZero ( 602202 ) <sometimesitsalex@ g m a i l . c om> on Thursday September 18, 2003 @01:47AM (#6991963) Homepage
      The answer to this is very simple.

      Not all geeks only have geek friends. For example, right now my AIM buddy list has 173 people on it. Some of these are coworkers, some are family and a vast majority of them are just random friends. I could probably name about a dozen or two dozen people out of that number that use IRC/are capable enough to use IRC. However, random cute girl from English class doesn't use IRC, and is not going to bother to learn how to use a much more confusing protocol.

      If the entire world were made up of Slashdot browsers and Linux geeks, your arguement would make sense. But, it simply isn't. The majority of the people out there are Windows users who don't WANT to know what's actually going on. And that is also the majority of my buddy list.

      I'm sorry, but random cute girl from English class doesn't give a fuck about "Open Standards", etc, etc. She just wants to chat with her friends. And I want to chat with her. So, I will continue to use GAIM to talk on AIM.


      • Re:Stupid Question... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by wfberg ( 24378 )
        I could probably name about a dozen or two dozen people out of that number that use IRC/are capable enough to use IRC. However, random cute girl from English class doesn't use IRC, and is not going to bother to learn how to use a much more confusing protocol.

        IRC could use better clients... How about a client where your user id is just username@irc.net, and the client figures out it needs to connect to IRCnet and set up a query with username? Doesn't trillian already use irc, and surely the jabber clients
  • What's the difference? I have a hard time staying connected to Yahoo's stupid IM service when I'm using their own client.

    Maybe they should put a little more effort into building a more robust network in the first place.

  • It only makes sense to keep out 3rd party clients.

    They loose the AD revenue, on what is *their* network, that they have to support ( i.e. $$ ).

    They have little, if anything, to gain from allowing others to connect. All this talk of 'increased market share' is bull.. with no ads, its just a resource drain to the owners of the IM networks.

    And to clarify, I don't like the 'standard' clients for various reasons, but I can see their point.. and where its headed.. NO 3rd party clients will be allowed.. and if

  • Yahoo! the IM choice? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fermion ( 181285 )
    I think it is interesting to note that Yahoo! seems to be the only good guy left in this mess. MS, though it owns 90% of market and therefore the vast majority of people who would use it's networks are it's customers, seem only want to annoy it's customers by not allowing them to talk to their friends who may have a need not to use the MS client. AOL, who really needs to seriously not give customers any more reason to leave their network, occasionally tries to close it's IM.

    So it is left to Yahoo! to pu

  • Gaim is fixed too. This was not an actual problem. (Score:5, Informative)

    by ChipX86 ( 102440 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @10:41PM (#6991237) Homepage
    "Upgrading" is as simple as changing a version string. We already have it updated in Gaim 0.69. This was a no-brainer easy-to-fix thing, as was MSN.

    If any Slashdot staff are watching, please, please refrain from posting articles related to IM unless you consult someone who knows what's going on. Too many trollish comments occur, and we get too many questions in Gaim support, all pointing at Slashdot as their source for the inaccurate information as to what's happening in IM.

    (Now I'll be marked as a troll, but it's hurting us IM developers more than it's helping, so I'm just going to post it anyway.)

  • DMCA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dakryx ( 646923 ) <dakryx@gmail.com> on Thursday September 18, 2003 @01:42AM (#6991937)
    Whats stopping yahoo from encrypting a tiny chunk of their protocol and then crush anyone with the dmca who tries reverse engineering the protocol

Slashdot Top Deals

Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein

Close