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The Internet Businesses

Yahoo Changes Protocol, Blocks Third Party Clients 506

Posted by michael from the purely-accidental dept.
NaDrew writes "ZDNet reports that Yahoo is once again blocking connections from Trillian (the alternative multi-protocol client). Yahoo tried this a few times last year and it looks like they're trying again. Cerulean, maker of Trillian, employs some excellent protocol engineers, who I have no doubt will quickly figure out Yahoo's latest obfuscation and release a patch. A quick fix discovered late this evening: Change your Y!IM host from scs.msg.yahoo.com to scs.yahoo.com, port 5050, and it should work. This is on Trillian 0.74H, not Pro."
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Yahoo Changes Protocol, Blocks Third Party Clients More

Yahoo Changes Protocol, Blocks Third Party Clients

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  • Centericq is also broken (Score:5, Informative)

    by RickL ( 64901 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:28AM (#9517190) Journal
    Centericq [centericq.de] is also broken. I'd be happy to use an official Yahoo! IM client...if they had one that was console-based.
    • Ok, you answered the question I was going to ask.

      Which is of course, why not use an official client since you are in fact using their network and resources to send messages.

      SO I ask the question to others

      How many would use an official ad-encumbered client if one was available for your prefered environment?

      • Re:Centericq is also broken (Score:5, Insightful)

        by micromoog ( 206608 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:36AM (#9517292)
        I don't want to run the AIM client AND the MSN client AND the Yahoo! client. So I use Trillian.

        • Re:Centericq is also broken (Score:5, Interesting)

          by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @09:11AM (#9517665)
          my specific situation wont apply to everyone, but...

          I was using trillian until I figured out that all my contacts were on all the four major instant messagers... then I consolidated all my contacts into just one IM client.
        • Nor do I want to have to run multiple instances of VMWare so that I can use my multiple Yahoo and MSN logins. That requires more memory than I have in my machine!

        • Gaim (Score:3, Interesting)

          by jimi the hippie ( 725322 )
          That's why I run GAIM, plus its open source.

          • Re:Gaim (Score:5, Informative)

            by lvdrproject ( 626577 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @10:32AM (#9518697) Homepage

            I don't know if you're on Windows, but i am, and i find that Gaim (for Windows) is a pretty poor client. I mean, it's OK, but compared to other things, it needs a lot of work. It seems to me like the Windows version of Gaim was nothing more than an after-thought. I can't get work done (I'm paid to sit around instant-messaging my friends all day -- true story.) using an after-thought. ;_;

            So... i use Miranda [miranda-im.org]. Needs a lot of work also, but it's much better off than Gaim, i find, and it's just as open.

            • Re:Gaim (Score:3, Funny)

              by jimbolaya ( 526861 )
              Blah, blah, blah about Gaim et al, let's get to the important stuff: What the hell kinda job do you have, man?

            • Re:Gaim (Score:3, Interesting)

              by BladeMelbourne ( 518866 )
              I only ever use MSN, Yahoo & ICQ. I hate bloat ware and advertisements.

              Under Linux I use GAIM - it does everything I want it to (except list Yahoo chat rooms). I have yet to explore getting my new WebCam working.

              However under Windows, I use Miranda. (It doesn't require GTK). It is a very small program, uses very little memory, and has the features I need (except browsing/entering Yahoo chat rooms). Miranda rocks - it is a subtle program, but has awesome features and many plugins. If I want to use my W

      • Re:Centericq is also broken (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jkabbe ( 631234 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:51AM (#9517436)
        Some of the clients are just too big. My family uses Yahoo on their PCs. I have a 12" PowerBook and the Yahoo Messenger client for OS X takes up a good 10+% of the screen. Adium, on the other hand, takes up about 10% of the space that Yahoo Messenger does so I can leave it always visible in the corner of the screen. For me it has nothing to do with ads and everything to do with customization for my needs.

  • pfft (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ncurses ( 764489 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:29AM (#9517204)
    Yeah, blocking people from chatting with their protocol will help anything.

    I think it blocks gaim also.

    • Re:pfft (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jubii ( 315611 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:34AM (#9517260) Homepage
      It all comes down to money. They want you to use their client so they can shoot their ads out to you and make more money. Use a third party client and they don't have that ability. It always comes down to money.

      • Re:pfft (Score:5, Informative)

        by ambrosine10 ( 747895 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @09:00AM (#9517527)
        I think the latest Yahoo Messenger client for Windows has no ads at all.

      • Re:pfft (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Call Me Black Cloud ( 616282 )
        Even if that was exclusively the case (which I doubt it is), so what? Yahoo has bills to pay. They run the servers, maintain the infrastructure. You think you should be able to use it for free? Perhaps you should discuss this theory with the phone company...

      • Google (Score:3, Interesting)

        by glamslam ( 535995 )
        I bet Google steps in to make chat a better experience. They'll figure out a way to make it profitable without being annoying... while remaining open. (crosses fingers) Or maybe I'm dreaming because I just got a gmail account and it *is* a better webmail experience.
    • I think it blocks gaim also.

      Yup. At least 0.77 is blocked (it tells me my password is incorrect)--I've not emerged 0.78 yet, so I don't know if it's blocked too.

  • Quick fix does not work (Score:5, Informative)

    by bruns ( 75399 ) <bruns.2mbit@com> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:29AM (#9517215) Homepage
    The quick fix to changing the server to scs.yahoo.com, port 5050 does not work for most people, and does not work with Miranda IM, GAIM, or other third party IM clients besides Trillian.

    It appears to be a separate server, and you won't be able to communicate with other people on the 'fixed' yahoo servers.

    • Re:Quick fix does not work (Score:5, Informative)

      by s.d. ( 33767 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @09:27AM (#9517912)
      the problem with the quick fix is that it logs you on to a different server. if you log onto scs.yahoo.com, you cannot see people logged onto scs.msg.yahoo.com, which is where everyone using the official client logs onto. it will let you on, but you'll not be able to converse with anyone except others using scs.yahoo.com, so it's not exactly a useful solution.
  • nope!

  • Trillian (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iacyclone ( 180583 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:30AM (#9517223)
    As a paying Trillian subscriber, I am disappointed in both Yahoo and Trillian. I figured that they had their differences settled last fall when similar stuff went on. I guess I assumed that Trillian was on a good working relationship with the people at Yahoo. I am up for renewal for my Trillian membership and am going to re-evaluate that purchase if this continues.

    • Re:Trillian (Score:3, Informative)

      by wasabii ( 693236 )
      Haha that's stupid. It's widely known Trillian has reverse engineered the other protocols. They have been blocked before, but again reverse engineered. They have NEVER had a good working relationship.

    • Re:Trillian (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      >As a paying Trillian subscriber

      there lies the problem. how is yahoo benefitting from offering its network and resources and have trillian charge for their client?

      money speaks. and since trillian is making money by piggybacking on yahoo resources while yahoo sees none of it, yahoo stops trillian.

    • Re:Trillian (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jarich ( 733129 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:56AM (#9517488) Homepage Journal
      So Trillian charges you money... and then piggybacks on Yahoo's servers for free? And AOL's servers? And ....

      hmmm.... (ponders the ethical dillema)....

      Anyone know why Trillian isn't paying for use? Have Yahoo and company offered?

  • Damn... (Score:5, Funny)

    by N3koFever ( 777608 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:31AM (#9517227)
    ...and I wanted to speak with all the people I know who use Yahoo Messenger.

    Oh, wait...

  • Kopete also (Score:5, Informative)

    by onree ( 680951 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:31AM (#9517229)
    Haven't been able to connect to Yahoo via Kopete since the block.

  • The business case sadly makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spoonani ( 786547 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:32AM (#9517240)
    While the Open-source people here usually have a hard time comprehending why someone like yahoo would do this, consider the following. Ad revenue from y! Instant Messenger: $$$ As revenue from user connected to trillian: 0 Of course yahoo understands that their client may not be the best out there, yet without any additional ad revenues it makes it tough to explain to upper management that it is worth allowing any old client to connect.
    • While the closed-source people usually have a hard time understanding why people won't use the 'official' software, consider the following:

      What makes people prefer trillian?

      If yahoo can figure that out instead of trying to lock people out maybe they won't have to lock people out.
    • I have no idea why anyone wants to use only one of these IM services. My game clan used ICQ, so I had GnomeICU for a while. I just stopped using it (not as easy as IRC), and went back to IRC again. Pretty soon, a lot of people are going to realize that it doesn't take a genius to write a messaging program. Hell, any one of us at Slashdot could whip out a beta in less than a week. I know I could, I already am writing something similar in Tcl.

      Anyway, website 'X' will have their own chat protocol, and account

    • Re:The business case sadly makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GeorgeH ( 5469 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:58AM (#9517505) Homepage Journal
      Yeah, but network effects [wikipedia.org] cause the whole Yahoo! network to be more valuable if more people are using it. Because Yahoo! users are able to talk to Trillian users, they stay on Yahoo!. If the Trillian users suddenly are unavailable, the Yahoo! users will start exploring other networks.

  • PLEASE NOTE (Score:5, Informative)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:32AM (#9517244) Homepage Journal
    Yahoo tried this a few times last year and it looks like they're trying again.

    I could dig up the older comments/articles which thoroughly contradict this troll-ish article summary but I don't think it deserves my time.

    Yahoo did not, I repeat did *not* try to "block" third party IM clients "several times last year". *All* they did was upgrade their protocol for better reliability/etc (I have personally noticed the increase in reliability/refresh rate etc). It is up to the 3rd party developers to upgrade their protocols if Yahoo decides to do so.

    And Yahoo did offer to help them fix their stack to help it work with their servers. I am not affiliated to Yahoo, btw - I just think it receives a lot more undeserved flak then it should.

    • Yahoo also recently released a new version with quite a few additional features (read: fluff). It would be no suprise to me if the additional features ended up breaking the old protocol format. How dare Yahoo make a change to their own product.

    • Re:PLEASE NOTE (Score:4, Informative)

      by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:41AM (#9517340)
      Found those links.
      Story here [slashdot.org]

      Story here [slashdot.org]

      Story here [slashdot.org]

    • Re:PLEASE NOTE (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:44AM (#9517375)
      Yahoo did not, I repeat did *not* try to "block" third party IM clients "several times last year". *All* they did was upgrade their protocol for better reliability/etc (I have personally noticed the increase in reliability/refresh rate etc). It is up to the 3rd party developers to upgrade their protocols if Yahoo decides to do so.

      Right. It's an unfortunate side-effect.
      They're also forcing all their users that DO use the Yahoo! approved clients to upgrade to their new client. A client with more bloat, more featuritis. No choice for the lowly user in all this. Yet the entire value of their messenger service is the number of people on it. That's the only reason 3rd party apps are made; people want to talk to other people who are on the Yahoo network. Instead of recognizing their users, even if they don't pay for the privilege of using the network, as a valuable asset, they treat them like, well, sheeple. Especially if you happen to be on a third party client.

      Even AOL treats third party clients better, by "supporting" an oudated version of their protocol. It might not have all the whizz-bang features, but it keeps even those damn geek hippies on the network, which is a good thing for all those involved, really.

      How would you feel if Microsoft suddenly changed the "hotmail" protocol, so you could send e-mail to any one on hotmail, or receive any from them? Even if it's your girlfriend, or your mother?

      How about if your telephone company suddenly won't let you connect to the bad side of town? All those free phonecalls cost em, you know?

  • Are they responsible for trillian? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Isn't it possible that they simply made a protocol change? Clearly they have every right to do that. They simply don't care about trillian customers, probably feeling they should do whatever they think is necessary to support their own service and their own customers.

    While it might be nice of them to support trillian as well, that just makes it more difficult to maintain their own service. Don't assume that their change was made maliciously just to irritate trillian users.

  • FYI Miranda forum thread (Score:5, Informative)

    by Stavr0 ( 35032 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:34AM (#9517258) Homepage Journal
    YAHOO Login Problems [miranda-im.org]

    In short, scs.yahoo.com:5050 is no good.

  • Not necessarily a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hafree ( 307412 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:34AM (#9517261) Homepage
    I've been using Trillian for about 2 years now and think it's a great application. However, there's a reason Yahoo never gave users the ability to send out a mass-message to everyone on your contact list. When programs such as Trillian start including this feature, the potential for abuse is fairly obvious.

  • AIM (Score:2, Interesting)

    by L3on ( 610722 )
    AIM has tried this in the past too, they even went back and forth with Cerulean for about two weeks constantly changing they way the AIM service connects. Finally they gave up and Trillian has worked perfectly even since. You think Yahoo would learn... However, I'm sure Yahoo is not changing thier protocal just to make Trillian not work, probably some underlying security issue we arn't seeing.
  • Their OS X client sucks, so I just won't use them anymore. Do these people not understand that people use things like Trillian because they're BETTER?
    • Maybe if Yahoo spent some time developing a better client instead of wasting it trying to keep the third parties off, they wouldn't have this problem to begin with.
  • I guess they don't want Linux/BSD, Etc users to be able to talk to their IM folks. What's the point in that other than to piss us off so we'll hack it again? That's a bit rude, IMO. Another black mark for Yahoo. Who do they think they are? Microsoft?

    "Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain

  • What about the law? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cculianu ( 183926 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:36AM (#9517293) Homepage
    Well, does anyone know if this is just a protocol upgrade or if yahoo! is really trying to get rid of the third party clients?

    If they want to get rid of 3rd party clients, then this is just another arms race, meaning we will eventually have open clients that work, after some finite delay.

    In all honesty I can't blame yahoo! for trying. After all, for each person that doesn't see the ads associated with their official client, they lose revenue.

    Yahoo! is a great site and they provide a LOT of stuff for free, so I don't blame them for trying to get some money back for all the free stuff they have given us over the years. I guess since IMing is so popular and so much time is spent in the IM client, to them that's a LOT of missing eyeballs over a long period of time that don't get to see the ads. That's a lot of money lost by the minute. And let's face it.. we are using their computers for free, and not giving anything back each time we use a third party client.

    My question though, is that if they hate third party IM clients for cutting into their rev. stream, why don't they take the law out of their own hands and use the law to their advantage? Is there nothing that could be done, by drafting some clever EULA or something, that would make it illegal or something like that to use 3rd party clients? That might actually dampen the efforts with libyahoo and other projects that try to develop an open protocol lib. Sourceforge might even cease to host such projects, being that they are in the realm of piracy or accorting to the DMCA.

    While it would suck for me (as I love to use centericq over their stupid client), why don't they just make it illegal to use third party clients?

    • Re:What about the law? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jazman ( 9111 )
      > we are using their computers for free, and not giving anything back

      Wrong. We're giving them a community for their clients to speak to. We use their computers for free, and they get our time for free. Sounds like a fair swap. If we didn't use 3rd party clients, there would be nobody except YIM users for YIM users to talk to. YIM users see the ads, but if YIM users didn't have anyone to talk to they wouldn't bother to use YIM in the first place.

      I'm quite sure, if they wanted to, AOL, Y! etc could

  • They're begging for it (Score:2, Informative)

    by inkedmn ( 462994 )
    So why not switch to an alternate IM system altogether? *cough*jabber [jabber.org]*cough*
    If they're going to be such babies about letting *more* people use their system, let 'em. They're pretty much second fiddle to AIM, it seems...
    • So why not switch to an alternate IM system altogether?

      The problem is that it's not as simple as one person changing messenger clients. If I change, I can't talk to anyone I currently do unless 5 other people change (I am apparently in the minority with such a small list :). But those 5 people won't change unless the 20 people on each of their lists changes. And *those* 20 (times 5) people won't change unless....you get the picture.

      And that's why multi-service chat programs are needed.
  • Why not simply boycott Yahoo's IM product?? If they keep changing the protocol to thwart easy adoption of alternate clients, especially clients that are designed to run on alternative operating systems, why continue to use them??

  • Re: Yahoo Changes Protocol, Blocks Third Party Cli (Score:5, Interesting)

    by manavendra ( 688020 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:42AM (#9517356) Homepage Journal
    In an era where instant messaging is touting as the "next big thing", most service providers are always faced with the dilemma of whether to allow third party clients to connect, or prevent.

    Messaging clients with advertisement-based model will surely object to allowing third party clients to connect, since it doesnt make any business sense.

    Furthermore, they may have allowed such third party clients in the past, to gain that critical mass that ensures market peneration and continued usage, but once they are past the bell curve, they would then clam down on it.

    Think of it as an equivalent to Microsoft clamping down on piracy - they never prevented that in the past knowing that so long as its their products being used, they will be able to generate revenues one way or the other. Now that the market penetration is coming to a saturation (or if not, there are far more alternative solutions available than ever before), they have started to really put on the squeeze.

    Finally, companies like trillian may well have the best protocol engineers in the world, but such disruptions in service shall push away customers every time, however small the percentage might be. Unless connectivity to widely used messengers is provided by agreement, such connectivity outages will cause most users to move to move away from them.

  • Adopting a new protocol (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pedrito ( 94783 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:43AM (#9517357)
    Of course, the best solution is to create a superior protocol and set of clients, get it standardized, and somehow get them widely adopted (yeah, I know, this is the hard part), and make it so that Yahoo and MSN want their messengers to be compatible with IT.

    I know this is pie in the sky, but this whole messenger war seems so stupid. Wasn't someone working on a standards for a messenger protocol? This whole messenger war thing seems so stupid and only serves to piss users off.

    This is ind of like copy protection and DRM. They keep trying to stop people and people just keep getting around it. Nobody ever seems to learn. Are they just going to keep beating their heads against the wall until the end of time? Are all these guys that clueless and stubborn?

  • Backwards compatibility with unsupported products? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mackman ( 19286 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:45AM (#9517383)
    Who blames them? When they decide to upgrade their product and add new features to their protocol, do you really expect them to test for backwards compatibility with all the unsupported 3rd party IM clients!? They never provided an API/protocol spec. They never provided developer support to 3rd parties. They have *no obligation* to maintain compatiblity and they clearly won't and shouldn't let backwards compatibility interfere with new features in their own clients. Damn tin foil hats.

  • Awfully sorry. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Raven42rac ( 448205 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:48AM (#9517410)
    Is this article supposed to make Yahoo look evil? If so, I don't see how. I know the popular notion on /. that "information wants to be free", but Yahoo provides a free service, and as with a free service, you are at the mercy of the provider. So Yahoo wants you to use their official client, it isn't the end of the world, nor do I think it is even newsworthy here on /. I am prepared for the inevitable karma loss on this comment, but I have been maxed out for years, it does not bother me anymore.
    • Well, the reason people get upset about this sort of thing is precisely because IM services are not normal free services, they are platforms which ruthlessly exploit network effects to gain profit.

      As it happens, I do not know anybody who uses Y!IM so I do not care about this. The story would be very different if it was MSN Messenger. I use Linux, my job requires it in fact, and of course there is no official MSN client for Linux and probably never will be. I would LOVE for all my friends to use Jabber, bu

  • malicious intent? piffle! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KingPrad ( 518495 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:57AM (#9517495)
    Come on, people. Yahoo is upgrading its protocol to prevent message spam. The changes temporarily prevent gaim, Trillian, and other clients from working until they make their own changes. This isn't a sinister act on Yahoo's part and the poster (and ZDnet) have nothing to stand on to say this is about blocking third-party clients.

    And to those complaining about the yahoo client, I find it to be the best IM program overall. The new version has a clean interface, quick access to your address book and other features, but is customizable to not show any of that stuff if you don't want the clutter. Best of all, it doesn't deliver ads. NONE. Plus the offline messaging is a great feature.

    Perhaps the people complaining haven't used it for a year or two and just think it's awful that a commercial company would break compatibility for an upgrade? It happens all the time in the open source world - cut Yahoo some slack.
    • From the article

      This time, however, Yahoo said it will continue changing its protocols to prevent clients such as Trillian from finding new ways to incorporate Yahoo. Again, the measure was cited by Yahoo as a way to prevent IM spam.(emphasis mine)

      So, yes, spam is cited as a reason, but yahoo _is_ saying that they are going to continue to block third party clients.

  • Google (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheLoneCabbage ( 323135 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @08:57AM (#9517501) Homepage

    Makes you just itch for a google client doesn't it?

    'Cause if it's Google it must be good!

    GMail - like turning on the lights and watching the cockaroaches scatter!

  • Yahoo Profit from Ads? What Ads?! (Score:5, Informative)

    by LordKazan ( 558383 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @09:01AM (#9517543) Homepage Journal
    Everyone keeps talking about how Yahoo wants to profit from the ads in it's Y! Messenger Software. What Ads? Unless you look at the other screens [you known the non-chat ones] you will not see any other ads

  • Another point... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tspauld98 ( 512650 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @09:01AM (#9517553)
    I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but I take Yahoo at their word that they are changing the protocol for security reasons. I typically use Gaim to connect to AOL, MSN, and Yahoo. I use Gaim for Yahoo just because I don't like extra processes running on my Linux machine when they don't need to be. The Yahoo client for Linux doesn't have ads. AFAIK, there's no way to make money off a free client and free service when there's not a single place to carry an ad.

    I have heard (but don't know because I've never used Trillian) that Trillian has "broadcast" features that sends messages to a list of users. I believe that Yahoo is trying to block clients that have this type of feature and clients, such as Gaim, that happen to share protocol libraries or access methods with these clients are "collateral damage".

    Perhaps if Trillian wanted to have a good working relationship with the service providers, they would not make it so easy to abuse the services in the first place -- IMHO.

    later,

    tims
  • "Make it so, Number 1"

    I can see the Yahoo engineers trying it now.

  • Arrogance.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jcostantino ( 585892 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @09:04AM (#9517579) Homepage
    So i've been reading a lot of the replies here and I just want to know this: Who the hell does anyone think they are telling Yahoo what they are allowed to do with Yahoo's IM protocol/service/client/bandwidth/etc? Yahoo provides a free client that runs with Yahoo's protocol on Yahoo's servers, they are allowed to do any damn thing they please and NOT allow anyone to connect if they don't want them to.

    I understand that there are valid reasons for not using the Yahoo client like unsupported OS's or "it sucks" - whatever. In the end, you are using their service for free and they aren't obligated to give you a damn thing. They could fold their tents tomorrow and wouldn't owe anyone but their creditors and customers (those who pay for services).

    Why doesn't some enterprising person create a P2P chat client? I was going to go on a rant about how if someone wanted to have a totally free IM client, they could buy the servers to host connections, pay for bandwidth, etc.. but the P2P chat may be better in the long run. Granted, that doesn't solve the problem connecting to Yahoo (or the like) but it's a good start, right?

  • Begun, this Yahoo-versus-Users war has. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RPoet ( 20693 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @09:18AM (#9517775) Journal
    Says TFA:
    "This time, however, Yahoo said it will continue changing its protocols to prevent clients such as Trillian from finding new ways to incorporate Yahoo."

    So it's obvious that clients like Gaim, Kopete and Trillian need to come up with a scheme to keep up. It would seem prudent to have a feature that detects a failure to connect, asks the user if he would like to update the Yahoo protocol plugin, and if yes, downloads and installs it automatically, and then connects successfully. It just takes some manpower to keep the plugins up to date, but this would be coordinated by a cross-client task force that would share information on the latest protocol changes.

    Of course, one can wonder if all this is really worth it. One day the whole world will be on Jabber (except we will rarely call it Jabber since it's so ubiquitous), and we will tell tales to our children of those days when we couldn't necessarily communicate with other IM users since there were competing (!) systems, and IM communication companies spent resources on trying to prevent communication. And they'll smile politely and think "old age has caught up with gramps." (and then they'll fly home in their cars, but that's another story)

  • How long until Yahoo sues Trillian? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Blackknight ( 25168 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @09:19AM (#9517785) Homepage
    Once yahoo makes an encrypted version of the YIM protocol, they can sue the makers of Trillian for DMCA violations.

    Even without the DMCA they may be able to bring a case against them if Yahoo's TOS prohibits 3rd party clients.
    • Once yahoo makes an encrypted version of the YIM protocol, they can sue the makers of Trillian for DMCA violations.

      Nope. The encryption wouldn't be protecting copyrighted content, so the DMCA wouldn't apply. Maybe they could try to pull a Lexmark, but I really doubt that strategy will actually pass muster with a human judge.

      Even without the DMCA they may be able to bring a case against them if Yahoo's TOS prohibits 3rd party clients.

      Nope again -- it would be the end-user who USES trillian that would

  • Open protocols (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @09:50AM (#9518176) Homepage
    Are there any open IM protocols? I noticed that Trillian now supports IRC, which makes sense so long as your friends all use the same server as you. Are there any IETF working groups for this? It can't be all that complicated to do. Maybe even piggy-back on some existing P2P system so that no one has to bear the expense of a central server?

  • Trillian Patches Available (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @10:00AM (#9518312)
    The Trillian guys have fixed it. You can grab the patches(Trillian Pro 2.013 & Trillian Basic Patch I) from the Trillian download page [trillian.cc].

  • Already fixed in GAIM CVS (Score:4, Informative)

    by AntiTuX ( 202333 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @10:21AM (#9518575) Homepage
    Directions located at http://gaim.sourceforge.net/downloads.php [sourceforge.net]

    Goddamn, that makes me feel geeky.

  • Use Jabber... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pointwood ( 14018 ) <jramskov AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @11:05AM (#9519063) Homepage
    Jabber [jabber.org] is the only free, open IM standard that's in relatively wide use and there're lots of clients available for it - I personally use Psi [slashdot.org]. I've switched long ago and haven't looked back.

    I often chat with friends that still uses MSN and ICQ through Jabber's transports or whatever it is they call them :) Of course, the Yahoo transport is most likely broken too, but I don't know anyone that uses Yahoo IM, so I don't care.

  • Just let them make money. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by njcoder ( 657816 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:33PM (#9520865)
    I know it's annoying to run 4 different im clients or sometimes your OS doesn't support their original software, or that version really sucks.

    But these companies spend millions of dollars on their networks for the hardware and software that is part of it. Let them play a little add here and there to help support it.

    All these ad blockers and ways of getting around their revenue streams only make them try and make more annoying advertising.

    If trillian wanted to be a good friend to yahoo, they'd pass through their advertising as well or find some other way to compensate them. Just because Yahoo decides to offer their network services for free doesn't mean anyone else can deploy software that uses it as well. It's like having someone write a robot to suck the content off your website, chagnge a few slogans and graphics and publish it on their site as their own minus your advertising.

  • Just for the record (Score:4, Informative)

    by destine ( 109885 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @02:08PM (#9521258)
    The commercial linux client they have doesn't work either, so they've, as far as I can tell, completely locked out all non-windows/Mac clients. Which may be a small amount, but when my company asked me to look for an IM client I went elsewhere because of their lackluster linux support.

  • Oh honestly. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stonecypher ( 118140 ) <stonecypher&gmail,com> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @07:12PM (#9523944) Homepage Journal
    They're not out to break other IM clients. That would be easy, and the various protocol changes they make are minor. They're simply reengineering their own network, and not taking the time to warn Cerulean, because they view them in a bad light.

    Look, all Yahoo! did was change what servers were handling what traffic. Historically they do that once every six months, presumably as a load balancing issue (the server list keeps widening and coming from a larger geographic area each time.) Trillian had a patch out in under 12 hours because the change was exceedingly minor.

    Yahoo! is not breaking remote clients. They're working on a service they provide, and sometimes other people's emulation of said service just needs to be upgraded to keep up with developments in Yahoo!. Quit with the nefarious tone.

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