It's Time To Take Back Instant Messaging 377
Enigma5O writes "The TechZone says the world of instant messaging is a disjointed mess, and it's time for a citizen's revolt. From the article: "The obstacles in this case are three big companies: AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft. Each wants to keep their networks closed, thereby forcing consumers to use their brand of software and effectively using their size to eliminate competition. Five years ago, Yahoo! and Microsoft were calling for then-leader AOL/ICQ to open their network to allow others to compete. They even successfully petitioned the FCC to restrict AOL's future developments before approving the AOL/Time Warner merger. When it was convenient for their business goals, Microsoft and Yahoo! waved the interoperability flag, but now that both companies have built substantial IM communities with their own closed networks, they have lost their passion for open networks.""
Take it back from what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Take it back from what? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Take it back from what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Take it back from what? (Score:5, Informative)
While there is slight differences in what each jabber server software supports, jabber servers do talk to each other quite nicely.
It works like email. If I am romeo@montague.org, I can send a message to juliet@capulet.org. The message will go to montague.org, which will open a connection to capulet.org, and then capulet.org will send a message to juliet.
Other than gmail, I can't think of a jabber implimentation that doesn't support S2S communication. After all, S2S communication is part of the jabber spec.
You may call it fragmentation. Fine. I think its a sane system.
Re:Take it back from what? (Score:3, Informative)
Ever heard of Unix talk [wikipedia.org] or IRC? Admittedly, IRC is kind of a different thing, but Unix talk can actually be said to be superior to today's popular IM networks, in the sense that it is completely decentralized (and yes, it works across completely unrelated networks). And it existed at least 10 years before anyone ever heard of ICQ. It only really lacks presence notification to make it a fully fledged IM protocol (oh yeah, and graphical smil
Re:Windows Messenger (Score:2, Interesting)
Trillian (Score:4, Informative)
The free version is good, but if you're willing to fork up $25, then the Pro version is worth it as well.
Gaim (Score:2)
with Yahoo Messenger you can sign in as invisible - but this option doesn't seem
to be there with GAIM. Does Trillian support this?
Re:Gaim (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gaim (Score:2, Informative)
Since not all clients supported invisible for awhile, Gaim didn't have a "set all invisble". Now they all support it, but that feature is still lacking =\
Ps. I'm using Gaim 1.5.0
-Ares
Re:Gaim (Score:5, Informative)
But you have to log in and then set invisible, you can't log in invisible.
Re:Gaim (Score:2)
I think you can do that only after you logon.
Re:Gaim (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Trillian (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Trillian (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Trillian (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Trillian (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Trillian (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Trillian (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Trillian (Score:5, Insightful)
But you still have to have three seperate logins to get on all the networks and if you change computers and install it on a new system, you get to resort all your contacts again. You don't have these problems on Jabber, and it lets you talk to the Obsolete Three (AIM/ICQ/Microsoft-Yahoo Messenger) networks just fine. It's also not shareware, and any time proprietary software is not involved is a great thing.
(Not to mention Trillian's got a user interface only a crackhead could love...)
Re:Trillian (Score:2)
Re:Trillian (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Trillian (Score:2)
"Miranda IM and associated plugins are all released under the GNU General Public License"
Re:Trillian (Score:2)
That alone makes Trillian and gAIM much better than Miranda.
Re:Trillian (Score:2)
Off-topic: what's the deal with all those ads for new smilies? Do people actually b
Add Skype (Score:5, Interesting)
Do away with the centralized server. (Score:4, Interesting)
Go peer-to-peer, using each other's IP address.
To discover someone's IP address, just e-mail your contacts a special message from which their IM will update it's table of address. Polling will check whether one is available or not.
Yes, it's time to take back our IM!!!
Re:Do away with the centralized server. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do away with the centralized server. (Score:2)
On a serious note. id say they would clearly need some kind of "checkin" system. direct p2p between people is rediculous, it works best with a distributed, decentralised network with servers still there but none in total control.
Pick your server, it determines what features to support based on whos running it, etc, and they communicate between eachother, enabling everyone on the network to find eachother.
Re:Do away with the centralized server. (Score:2)
DCC (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Do away with the centralized server. (Score:2)
I don't know much about JXTA. I just have a friend who once got really excited about it and actually joined the dev team. Then he made one or two contributions and lost his interest. To make a long story short: I don't know the fine details, that's why I posted links.
Re:Do away with the centralized server. (Score:2, Interesting)
If everyone you know uses MSN, and you use MSN, that's all you need. You don't need to centralise anything. This article is a solution looking for a problem.
Re:Do away with the centralized server. (Score:3, Interesting)
I did something similar to what you are proposing back in 1997, it was called ringChat.
It was a peer to peer client and you had to either enter the IP address of someone in the ring or have the application query a cgi script on a web server. The script on the server would record your IP address and tell you the addresses of others who had queried the web server.
Once you connected to one of the clients in the peer to peer ring you would discover the IP addresses of all the ot
Re: (Score:2)
"Its time to support my job security" (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy is totally right. Instead of these 3 expensive monopoly services, we should instead switch to one single service that we know is far more competitive than three monopolies. It is wonderful that he's so unselfish, I'm sure the time he spends working on his company's (check the link on that tirade) software is donated.
While we're breaking down the IM monopoly, we should also tear drop the fruit monopoly that all those grocery stores have, and just grow and share fruit amongst each other in a free and open way. Come by the farm I work for, get a free orange while you peruse our other items for sale. Screw big bad grocery stores! My company gives away oranges!
There's no problem here. This guy is posing his rant in order to generate interest in his company to better secure his job. We should make every car part interoperable between manufacturers, and make every TV the same size so that everyone sees the same picture. I'm sure it won't stifle development.
Re:"Its time to support my job security" (Score:3, Funny)
Could ya email it to me?
KFG
Re:"Its time to support my job security" (Score:4, Interesting)
Both companies believe that they can use IM as a platform to make money, or as a platform to lock people into other services that cost money. Otherwise they wouldn't be providing the service and resisting inter-operation. Both companies sell enterprise servers that can be used within corporate environments to provide features unavailable with the free client. You can bet that any "innovations" will appear in that environment and not in the free version.
For instance, there is a limited number of contacts that you can use in MSN, but that limit is removed with the enterprise server. For many people thats not an issue, but I know of a lot of helpdesk and GNOC people who need more than an average number of contacts, and they run into the limit all the time. If I try to create a new inovative service that runs on top of IM networks, I will need to pay a tithe to Microsoft to use more than the limited number of contacts they allow. If Microsoft didn't like my new service they could block it at the server and I would be powerless to stop them, and even today my choice of alternate providers would be quite limited.
Microsoft has already started to talk about integrating MSIM into exchange and outlook. Just one more example of how Microsoft can extend one monopoly into another, and how they plan to tie IM inovations to overpriced software.
Your grocery store is about as lame an analogy as I have ever seen, but I will attempt to use it to show where you are confused. I can go to any grocery store I like and buy a bag of apples, bring them home, and bake a pie with ingredients purchased at any other store I like, and the grocery store has no way to stop me. There is no such promise with MSIM or AIM.
Yes there is _some_ choice of clients at present, but that is only by fiat of Microsoft and AOL. They can use encryption and soon trusted computing to lock out competing clients, or to charge competing vendors licensing if they want to inter-operate. This is not a question of "if", but "when". At some point they _will_ see an opportunity and they _will_ take it.
I don't want to have to rely on Microsoft and AOL to give me permission to use IM or whatever new innovations are be created to use an IM network. Not when it is possible to have an open network to provide the same thing. This is not a case of trading multiple providers for one. It is trading three providers for as many others that want to enter the market. Yes, the core protocols will be the same. But that stops nobody from extending them or adding additional features to clients. Open standards provide a common platform from which anyone can inovate, while closed standards limit inovation to the corporations in power.
The Jabber network really is the answer here, and with Google's new involvement, and commitment to support S2S federation we might stand a chance to make this part of the Internet as free (as in speech) as HTTP and SMTP are today. In fact, this may be our only chance.
Try to look past the next year when thinking about what direction we want our network to go. Less corporate control will always be preferable in the log term, even if it is not in the short term.
Re:"Its time to support my job security" (Score:2)
There's no problem here. This guy is posing his rant in order to generate interest in his company to better secure his job. We should make every car part interoperable between manufacturers, and make every TV the same size so that everyone sees the same picture. I'm sure it won't stifle development."
Last time I checked, I could phone a phone in the UK or the US without problem, from my home in Canada. Why should it be so hard to get a text message to someone in the same places when we both have Windows [o
Re:"Its time to support my job security" (Score:2)
You're a genius, you know that?
Re:"Its time to support my job security" (Score:5, Insightful)
You're heading towards making a good point but it all falls apart when you start talking about cars and TVs.
It doesn't matter if your car and my car are interoperable because our cars never have to communicate between each other (yet). Neither of us would benefit in anyway if it were possible for us to swap belts or hoses or mufflers or whatever.
But it does not matter when it comes to a communication platform. What if you couldn't call someone because they used AT&T and you used Sprint? What if your Nextel cellphone could only connect to other Nextel cellphones? You would clearly think that it was ridiculous. An earlier reply to your comment was on the right track about ISPs and email. But what if you couldn't email him because you could only email within your own ISP? What if you could only visit websites hosted by your ISP? What would be the point? The internet wouldn't never have developed under these kind of preposterous circumstances. But those are a much better analogy for the IM world.
Then you throw in GAIM, Trillian, and whoever else that tries to establish general connectivity and the "monopolies" fight to keep them out. Equivalent to a third party company setting up one set of phone lines to AT&T and one set to Sprint and then when you (on you're AT&T phone) want to call someone on a Sprint phone you call the third party first and they make the connection for you. Or even better, you personally get both kinds of phones and both kinds of phonelines and then have the third party come to your house and wire up a hacked connection between them. Then in the middle of the night, someone from Sprint sneaks up to your house and cuts the wires. Or else they modulate their phone signal with propietary garbage that only they know how to filter out so you still have the connection but it's useless.
Would you still fight against a citizen's revolt in a circumstance like that?
I will point out however, that what I first quoted from you above is still an important comment. Notice that in all my silly analogies I never said that Sprint and AT&T should merge (with all the other telcos) and become one gigantic conglomerate. Instead, they should still all exist (competition is good), they just all need to recognize that they would all benefit if they established general connectivity (well, all minus Trillian, etc unless you just prefer their interface).
Right now, people primarily choose to use existing IM services solely because their friends do. If they all interoperated, then we would choose them based on their quality of service (just as we ideally do with cellphones, etc). And then hopefully that quality of service would finally start to improve.
Re:"Its time to support my job security" (Score:2)
My problem with attempting an open standard is that I don't like committees getting involved during the feature building stages.
Yes, standards can be wise but they an also stifle innovation. How long does it take a committee to add new features to the standard?
My PDA has 3 IM clients and I'm fine with it. I believe they'll all eventually intercommunicate without forcing an open standard early on.
Re:"Its time to support my job security" (Score:2)
Early telephone standards made cell phone research take decades. It slowed DSL rollouts and kept features like CID out for a decade, too.
The industries saw the need for new features and the market decided which "standards" were the most desirable.
IM is doing just fine for hundreds of millions of users. If they decide (through millions of individual choices) that they want interopera
Re:"Its time to support my job security" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Its time to support my job security" (Score:2)
Tell that to the people driving Toyotas and Hondas made in the US.
Re:"Its time to support my job security" (Score:2)
Its also common for farmers that do this, they tend to "ask" that you pay but often do not require it. Many do put out some of their crop for free.
I guess thats the nice part about living in a good count
Genuine question (Score:2)
Re:Genuine question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Genuine question (Score:2)
one word: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:one word: (Score:5, Insightful)
Consolidation in the IM Market (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that we can expect interoperability to take a much greater role in the next few years as the number of net users with an instant messenger increases. The number of users that have an IM account today is huge; I don't think I know a single person with Internet access who doesn't.
Typically someone looking to choose a network will want what their friends (etc.) use, which poses a problem for the major networks; once somebody's entrenched within a network, it's very difficult to convince them to switch. Client 'A' may offer some new form of user picture, or so on, but the end user is unlikely to make the switch unless they can convince most of their friends to make it too.
What the networks would love is for people to make an impulse switch. If they can guarentee a user that they'll still be able to contact all their friends, as existing pan-network clients such as Trillian or Adium do today, then the likelyhood of a user making a spur of the moment choice is far greater.
Re:Consolidation in the IM Market (Score:2)
You do now.
IM Cliques (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IM Cliques (Score:2)
Re:IM Cliques (Score:2)
Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
And I'm not sure what it means exactly, but Trillian lists "AIM\ICQ" as one plugin, one entity. I know AOL bought ICQ but I don't know what that means for the networks - I assume they use the same back end but are kept physically or logically separate. I'm not saying multimillion dollar buyouts are the same as open infrastructure, but it disproves this topic to a point. Maybe a mass merger like Microsoft\Yahoo is the best we can hope for in terms of in
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
BZZT! Wrong! If you hate ads as much as you do, use an alternative: Not AIM, not MSN, not Yahoo, not ICQ. Jabber [jabber.org].
I have an idea (Score:5, Funny)
Internet Relay Chat
It will be HUGE
Re:I have an idea (Score:2)
Obviously noone thought of this before, so no prior art exists.
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet you that 90% of all AIM users (which is tens of millions of people) have never once used, much less heard of, IRC... and you're suggesting that they somehow "switched" to AIM to avoid some arcane technical issue or made a conscious choice to use it over IRC?
Instant Messaging is superior to IRC in many, many ways. That, and the massive marketting of IM by a wealthy Internet conglomorate, ensured that it is now the de facto standard in online chat.
IRC (Score:5, Informative)
Geez, all this whining about proprietary half-assed IM networks. Show people how to use irc! They can use it with GAIM [sourceforge.net] or any other various [xchat.org] GUI [mirc.com] client [hiddenmemory.co.uk]. (Or text [irssi.org] if they prefer.) It's been around for decades, anyone can run a server, there are a multitude of clients on every platform, and it's entirely open. You can transfer files, and even have stupid graphical smileys and sounds if you want (or filter them if you don't).
Seriously, if people want an "open IM network", fire up an irc server, give everyone GAIM or Google Messanger, and be done with the AOL angst.
Re:IRC (Score:2)
Re:IRC (Score:2)
While there is no technical reason you couldn't use the IRC protocol with an IM-like front end, that's not really what it was designed for.
Re:IRC (Score:2)
What do you think Google messenger does? It uses Jabber! The original Jabber client was basically an IRC style client.
As for "whispering" in the IRC world this is called sending a private "message." And why is it so cumbersome to double click a persons name and type into a window?
Re:IRC (Score:2)
I usually just use DCC for private conversations, although that might not be possible for the average corporate user with strict firewalls to deal with.
Closed? (Score:2, Insightful)
Welcome To The New Capitalizm (Score:2)
And don't think Google is a shining
MSN and Yahoo are cooperating (Score:4, Informative)
MSN and Yahoo are cooperating [eweek.com]
Take the article down (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Take the article down (Score:2)
Jabber/XMPP On :) (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem are social connections. People are on MSN because their friends are on MSN. Same for Yahoo!
But who from your contact list/roster, in the first place, came on MSN or Yahoo!? Well, users who were advertised by their Yahoo! account or using the MSN client being shipped with Windows. Compare to "Who made you join ICQ, or IRC". No ads, only because it was the way to go, because some computer techies back then told you it was great (well, it WAS indeed).
Slashdot crowd and others, being [...] computer and technologies aware, should be the first link in each of our own socials network to tell others to go Jabber. Non-techie people should trust us on the technical side: Jabber is way better designed than others major IMs services. The Jabber community, for now, is mainly composed of geeks and free software hobbyists. Let's tell our friends to make the switch. It's a little time consumming the first time, but it's free. Tell them to use GTalk (which should be openly federating soon, even with some restrictions to avoid 'spim'..) or any other Jabber server.
There are tons of great clients for Jabber. Under GNU/Linux, you may try Gajim, Tkabber, Gaim or Psi. Under Mac OS X, Gush, Psi or of course iChat. And for those still under Windows, Miranda, Exodus, Gaim or Psi. Google for them.
And they will soon ALL support the feature you want, just give it some time [slashdot.org] More info [jabber.org]
Don't forget Adium and Proteus. (Score:3, Informative)
The best IM clients IMO for OS X that have Jabber support (along with practically every other network) are Adium [adiumx.com] and Proteus [defaultware.com] (both of which use GAIM).
It's your own fault! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if the world had just stuck to using IRC, instead of jumping on the (at the time) overhyped, closed, and advertisement-infected instant messaging, you wouldn't have gotten this mess. As it stands, IRC is still around, and you can even use IRC to access the other networks through services like Bitlbee.
Popular software (among the intelligentsia of the net) like Gaim, Trillian, Opera and (I think) Mozilla (the suite) supports it, so you might already have a client installed.
So, no more excuses, break the proprietary chains and maybe you will be the one to write the next big popular extension. Yes, that's right. IRC is fairly easy to extend, and there are innumerable bots that do just that. You're not a proper hacker until you've written your own.
Re:It's your own fault! (Score:4, Interesting)
I have coded bots, hacked IRC daemons many times (Unreal or Bahamut), coded my own IRC services (bots that fake themselves as servers to get the full network image). It sucks. It's only hacks. Bad hacks.
We need a protocol which supports extensibility in the first place. Something like XML. Oh, wait, isn't Jabber XML-based?
You don't "hack" Jabber. Or if you call it hack, it's clever, academic and well-designed hack which won't break anything else. It's easily extensible with JEPs (Jabber Extension Protocols). It rocks.
Now there's still a huge paradigm shift between IM and Traditional Chat à la IRC. But Jabber supports MUCs (Multi User Chats) which are very IRC-like. I hope someday IRC will remain just as an attraction, a museum for your grandkids "Hey grandpa, did you really chat on something THAT badly designed?"
Don't get me wrong: I love IRC, I have spent years on it, and had good laughs. But it was because of the community, of the general IRC spirit. It must not die. But the protocol is crappy, has tons of weirdness and exceptions, really WRONG word-splitting and is FAR TOO MUCH limited.
It may be a little soon to forget IRC. But I'm working on it. I'm working on making all of us forget IRC
Stay tuned
Jabber vs. IRC (Score:2)
You like Jabber, and think IRC suffers from lack of extensibility. I like IRC, think it's very extensible, and think Jabber is just a bloated (yes, I care about those few bytes) protocol, developed in a spirit of either ignorance or NIH syndrome, that does basically the same thing.
Yes, Jabber has some good features, but it's nothing that couldn't have been done as an incremental imp
Re:Jabber vs. IRC (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's your own fault! (Score:2, Insightful)
IRC and instant messaging are not the same. You should probably not use Gaim to connect to IRC, and you should probably not use Bitlbee to connect to an IM network, if you have a choice. There are exceptional cases, of course, but, like most exceptional cases, they are rare.
IM offers fancy things like formatted messages, voice chat, and buddy lists that are not handled very well by Bitlbee.
IRC offers something a little less tangible. It has tradition and culture. The IRC way has stood the test of time.
Re:It's your own fault! (Score:2)
Corporate IM (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Corporate IM (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you talking about? Microsoft offers a corporate IM server called Live Communications Server. [microsoft.com] IBM offers Lotus Sametime. [lotus.com] Apple even has one built into OS X Server 10.4. [apple.com] There are also other companies that offer corporate/enterprise instant messaging solutions, so the server and clients are run in-house.
~Philly
Re:Corporate IM (Score:2)
Re:Corporate IM (Score:2)
Re:Corporate IM (Score:2)
Well, maybe do a little research next time before making sweeping pronouncements, hmm? I can tell you that one company that my company works for uses Lotus Sametime. I can't disclose the name, but let's just say it's likely you've got a few cans of their main product in your kitchen.
A simple IM program isn't that hard to program, why do the corporate solutio
Re:Corporate IM (Score:2)
Re:Corporate IM (Score:2)
Which IM standard? (Score:2)
XMPP is based on XML messaging and is used by Jabber. Google base their service on XMPP, but have not shown any intent of interconnecting
Why should they be open? (Score:2)
2 Out of 3 Is Bad? (Score:2)
One step... (Score:2)
Flamebait (Score:3, Informative)
I'll bite (Score:3, Informative)
If by "released" you mean to anyone willing to pay for a Microsoft Communications Protocol Program License [microsoft.com], and then use the specs only accordingly, then why, yes. In the same vein, I also heard Microsoft released the Windows source code.
IM (Score:3, Informative)
MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:2)
HOW IS IT OFFTOPIC OR A TROLL? (Score:2)
Typical slashdot mods smoking weed once again. I have a theory some mods mod down anything that contains swearing. I've found the likelihood of my post getting modded down increases when I use expletives. Fucking mods.
Re:OOh! Shiny. (Score:2)
I prefer to give websites a fighting chance at me clicking on a link (and thus helping to support their business method). If they're ads are so obnoxious that I want to resort to an adblocker, I merely stop visiting the website.
Re:Jabber (Score:2)
Re:bias? (Score:3, Informative)