It's quite interesting to read the slashdot comments.
There are a bunch of "Why not use IRC?" kinds of comments, some people who mention they're happy with the proprietary silo they happen to be using and others who say there are enough other FOSS messaging solutions already.
Reminds me a lot of HN. The more things change...
I haven't seen a single comment complaining about XML though !
Good old XMPP. If it wasn't so intimidating to setup from a layman's perspective, I'd probably run my own relay(?) at home and use it for direct communication with close family/friends.
>What's the point of creating an "open" protocol, when AOL has already opened theirs? ICQ, of course is totally stupid, lagged, and insecure. I was glad to hear that AOL bought them out...maybe it will add some of the AOL stability to it.
But AOL has always been adamant about not wanting their users’ screen names and their passwords going through any software that’s not controlled by them. It’s an understandable position. I don’t know if it gives them the right to try as hard as they do to block everybody.
AOL was causing the client to look up a particular address in memory and send it back to the server. This was tricky, vastly trickier than anything they’d done so far. It was also a bit outside the realm of fair play: exploiting a security hole in their own client that our client didn’t have!
Around the same time frame, AOL had also released a protocol spec for TOC, which was sort of useful for talking to AIM (although it missed enough functionality that you would eventually want to use the fully proprietary protocol anyway)
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 37.4 ms ] threadThere are a bunch of "Why not use IRC?" kinds of comments, some people who mention they're happy with the proprietary silo they happen to be using and others who say there are enough other FOSS messaging solutions already.
Reminds me a lot of HN. The more things change...
I haven't seen a single comment complaining about XML though !
Take a look at this up-to-date howto for Prosody: https://homebrewserver.club/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server...
>What's the point of creating an "open" protocol, when AOL has already opened theirs? ICQ, of course is totally stupid, lagged, and insecure. I was glad to hear that AOL bought them out...maybe it will add some of the AOL stability to it.
From http://www.linux-mag.com/id/902/ :
But AOL has always been adamant about not wanting their users’ screen names and their passwords going through any software that’s not controlled by them. It’s an understandable position. I don’t know if it gives them the right to try as hard as they do to block everybody.
From https://nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/ :
AOL was causing the client to look up a particular address in memory and send it back to the server. This was tricky, vastly trickier than anything they’d done so far. It was also a bit outside the realm of fair play: exploiting a security hole in their own client that our client didn’t have!
And they even used trademarks on terms like "instant messenger" and "buddy list" to fight competition: https://www.wired.com/1999/05/does-aol-own-buddy-list/