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AOL Jilts Open Source 165

Posted by Roblimo from the first-they-give-it-then-they-take-it-away dept.
Cerb writes "AOL seems to have retracted the specs to its TiK protocol." The lead paragraph of the ZDNet story Cerb sent in says, "The controversy surrounding America Online Inc. and instant messaging has spilled over into the realm of open source, raising fundamental questions about open-source licenses and commercial vendors' use of them." Could they do the same to Mozilla? A scary thought.
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AOL Jilts Open Source More

AOL Jilts Open Source

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  • Re:IM (Score:1)

    by ksheff ( 2406 )

    Really, I'm using gaim right now. My buddy list is intact. Earlier versions of gaim had problems keeping the buddy lists synced. Which version do you have? I'm using 0.9.7.

  • For one thing, the AIM protocols were published but kept proprietary. TiK, GAIM and all the other alternative AIM clients were bound by a restrictive license on use of the protocol. Mozilla, on the other hand, is protected by a self-protecting open license much in the same way as GNU software.

    Secondly, AOL's main intent behind the temporary withdrawl of the open-source AIM clients is to impose order on what has been lax enforcement of their license terms in recent months. Besides the perhaps peevish restriction on misuse of the protocol for cracking and address-harvesting apps, AOL has a perfectly valid interest in preserving their ad-revenue stream on the mainstream clients. A few thousand Unix users running adless (and kinda crappy) clone clients without ads is harmless and keeps hackers happy. Mass-market clones that do so and insert their own ads (see MSN Messenger) are another story.

  • Re:Popular Myth (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's absurd. Source is only "open" if it's RELEASED... What the GPL does is require people who use existing GPL'd code to RELEASE the code of modified versions along with the binaries (and under the GPL, no less).

    W/O copyright laws, it'd be quite possible for someone to release binaries and no source, thereby keeping "control" over the product.

    Of course, sane people would just refuse to use it. And of course, all software would be "free" in the "free beer" sense, barring technical copy-protection that's not day-zero crackable...

    Of course, I do think we should abolish copyright laws - as well as foster a sane enough community that code remains open, and Free in the "Free Speech" sense.

    But then, I believe in Santa Claus.

  • The issues of who pays for the "free servers" is what makes it tricky.

    Companies like AOL, on the other hand, naturally try to finance the servers through advertising and are understandably wary of third party clients.

    Ideally, IM service would be provided by ISPs, just like they provide SMTP service. But ISPs have little incentive to provide any kind of IM service until there is a large demand for it, and that won't happen until a protocol has been established.

    A distributed advertising protocol linked to chat, similar to the way banner ads have worked with companies like LinkExchange in the past, might be a short-term solution. Once the service is off the ground, it may then simply become a must-have for ISPs.

  • I thought the ZDNet story might be a bit overblown. Seem to be a lot of reporters out to make news recently.

  • I think more operatively they changed it to make
    it difficult to script access to hotmail. I
    used to do just that -- I had a perl script that
    opened the web pages, POSTed the forms, retrieved
    the messages, forwarded them to my account on my
    linux box (using sendmail of course), and then
    deleted them.

    They changed their interface and included a
    couple of weird redirects which appear to serve
    no function other than to confuse automated
    systems (perhaps I'm paranoid...).

    So now I can't (well, I could, but it's not worth
    the effort IMHO) fake POP over their web interface
    so I let that email be a spam address now which
    I check about once a month just in case something
    legit got sent there. It makes me warm and fuzzy
    to think that an MS company is providing a free
    box for my junk mail.
  • Actually, AIM has those small ads for the AOL service (Do they ever advertise anything else?) and links to AOL's portals. While giving a service away may not be directly profitable, using it to subject people to advertisements is (or at least percieved to be). That's how most big websites work. It's all about "eyeballs".
  • The abstract notion of "Specification of a Thing" *cannot* have copyright because it would be like copyrighting the idea of how to fly a plane - anyone can do it if they find out the interactions with the plane that they must perform.


    Here though, there is potential for patent problems (AFAIK the IM protocol has no patent pending and has been published, so there can be no contention here - it's also not non-obvious to an expert in the field of interactive textual communications). It would be difficult to patent a communications protocol under any circumstances anyway. Any protocol for a new niche would be an obvious amalgum of prior art.

    Why could there be patent issues with a comms specification? Because it is a part of a "Method to do such and such, with such and such". But this (as I said above) would not be easy to weasle, and would not stand up in court (but IANAL).

    --
  • Uh, actually, I don't see how MS having control of the *web* really killing off linux. They need both server and client control, and they'd somehow have to stop the distribution of linux, which would basically be impossible. It'd be like the government trying to monitor all internet traffic, it's just not possible right now. besides, MS needs linux, how else do they have even a chance of evading monopoly status? Apple? Os/2? Solaris?
  • Rob never posts my crap. I post somthing like this before I leave for a trip, get back 4 days later, and he posts a different story about the same thing.. who cares that articles have been written now. I posted that it was gone and off their page befre they released a statement. This is the third time I've posted, and they never put it on the page.. *Suggestion:* make a link on the left with all the others where people can view waiting to be reviewed and/or rejected articles, although that'd require more bandwidth.

    - funnyguy
  • Um guys,

    Remember, this is ZDNet we're reading. Last time I checked, Tik/TOC was NOT anything near GPL. Reasonably open, but definately not GPL, and possibly not even meeting the DFSG. (I never bothered to check the license that carefully, it was Good Enough for me.)

    If AOL really wanted to kill Tik/TOC, they would've taken the service down and killed the TICTOC-USERS mailing list which they host. Yes, the page is down. But one of the current theories on TICTOC-USERS on why the page is gone but the service (and files) are still there is that the webmaster picked a Very Bad Time to go on vacation. Of course, I could just be on crack. :)

    Whoops, looks like they changed the license. It is GPLed now. But so far they have done nothing that violates the GPL. Sure, taking down the pages is a bit anal, but the disappearance of the pages might just be an accident. "document contains no data" doesn't say much - if they were really trying to kill off Tik, there would be some sort of message saying "TiK has been discontinued" or something like that.
  • It is simple bussines logic to see that NO one would give a flying s**t about Apache if IE had 90% market share. (They simply would be INCOMPATIBLE)

    Actually, there aren't any IE / apache compatibility issues. Apache just serves the pages, the pages can be standard, or have IE or Netscape or whatever other type of extenstions you want.
  • Us early risers (*groan*) get to make the first intelligent post, it seems. (Being patient through the poor performance and such helps too.) But anyways, AOL's doing the logical and intelligent thing.

    In the middle of this messaging war, anything that's open source is like a giant bullseye painted on AOL's back. I doubt that AOL is doing this permanently. This is simply a measure that needs to be taken to protect themselves against Microsoft currently. I can forgive that.

    AOL isn't blocking TOC/TiK clients, they're not actively attempting to create specific interopability problems either. This is a clear sign that they're not out to destroy TOC/TiK, but simply attempting to do damage control as quickly as possible.

    Wait till the war is over. TOC/TiK will be back, rest assured. AOL's already realized that the open source community is one of their best and most powerful allies. But Microsoft is one of their worst enemies, and any information that MS can get is ammunition for use against them.

    -RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
  • ...the problem seems to be that I'm not dishonest enough to download that. =)

    ::sigh:: Damn export regulations...

  • I don't understand what you're getting at here. They haven't made it impossible to port to Win3.1 and would welcome anyone who was willing to help with a port. Netscape has to put it's own developers to work on the most important platforms which are Linux, Win32 and MacOS in terms of popularity. So if you've got Win16 programming skills why don't you offer to help out.
    --
  • ...should be ignored unless they are useful in other contexts. A client that has no use outside a non-open server should not be considered open source but rather a marketing gimmick.

    Obviously, a client that could be used as a base for a completely open source solution is a different matter. Beware of big companies with limited open source projects.
  • >Lets see all those awesome open source chat/messaging software out >there. Why doesnt everyone use them? You OSS zealots are all talk, no >action.

    Well considering that I have no real interest in chat/messaging software anymore, why should I use it? Hell I've gotten to the point where I don't even run an IRC client under linux or windows very much anymore because of the c00l dUdEz like you who are really quite boring.
  • Although what they're doing is bad for the open source community I don't think they'll do the same with Mozilla. They need to produce a small, fast standards based browser if they want to compete with MS. Although they are currently using IE they'll probably change to Mozilla when it's ready and their agreement with MS is over.

    Even if they did many people already have the source code and continue developing it (there are still some non-Netscape developers working on it, although not having Netscape's contribution would slow the project down). Mozilla needs more people to help track down bugs, if you visit www.mozilla.org and try out the nightly builds you'll be a great help to the project.

    BTW if anyone does have the AOL IM code and it was under GRL like the article says you're perfectly entitled to make it available for download under the terms of GPL even if AOL has retracted it.
    --
  • Simple: if MS gets to 90% share for IE they will be in a position to cut the Linux blood flow - the Internet.

    Joining the "Internet equals web" community does not add credibility yo your arguments. The Internet existed before Microsoft got networking into their excuse for an OS, and will exist after the Web turns into yet another entertainment product for the masses.

  • The way MS and Yahoo are saying that they want open protocols is such a joke, when they aren't even willing to open up their own.

    I can't even get them to get me minimal information that would let me extend GTKYahoo to all of the new capabilities. I have been able to do some of the features, but others require the new login method, which I haven't been able to figure out how to generate.
  • > What!?! They are not "their" users! They are AOL's customers, but that doesn't give AOL the right to treat them like commodities.

    Customers are commodities. Ask any marketer. They buy and sell you all the time.
  • This is very disappointing, as AOL has seemed to put a lot of effort into making TOC usable and effective for the OSS community. Hopefully this is not a permanent turn, and we'll get the specs/etc back after this whole MS thing blows over.

    On the bright side, gaim and TiK still seem to be working OK for me. It seems they're not actively working against us.

    I noticed the TiK and TNT sites were down several weeks ago, and wondered what was up then...
    Ethan
  • Ah yes, the death of the GPL (and all other forms of copyright.)

    Now that is going to convince working programmers to contribute to open source.

    Hint- if the copyright laws were abolished, the GPL would be invalid along with all other protection schemes.

    All the GNU utilities would be available, but the 'G' at the front of the names could be excised. Company X, Y, and Z could introduce new improved versions that gave them the lead, because there wouldn't be any copyright law to enforce.

    Sounds dandy. We all start eating fruits and nuts we gather off trees, too, eh?
  • You want instant heat? That cast iron wedge, the splitting maul, that stump, and that pile of oak logs is your answer!

    Haha.
  • It is Open Source, but AOL is saying companies can't come along and try to pull BSD-style bullshit with it, which seems to be what Microsoft and the others are trying to get away with, and people like yourself seem to be supporting. I wonder did Yahoo and the others even bother asking for AOL's permission to connect to their servers to begin with?

  • Re:"We want open protocols" from Yahoo+MS, yeah ri (Score:3)

    by edgy ( 5399 ) on Saturday August 14, 1999 @08:12AM (#1746542)
    Maybe it doesn't push ads now, that MSIM has like no marketshare. But if they succeed in getting marketshare, I'm sure MS will capitalize on it.

    Here's how I see it:

    M$ is once again jumping on a bandwagon after it has proven to be a moneymaker, and they're trying to use AOL's own servers against them.

    Once they get enough marketshare, they'll simply add new "enhancements" that will be hard for AOL to duplicate using their networks, include it in future OEM releases of Windows, and gain marketshare unfairly, with their Windows monopoly advantage.

    Without the false "Open Standards" push, and connectivity to AOL Instant Messenger, they run a risk of people installing the AOL IM Client even if the MSIM client comes with Windows, so they can talk to their AOL friends.

    Microsoft needs to be able to make MSIM interoperate with AOL IM, or their whole strategy won't work.

    The fact that M$ owns 90%+ of the OEM Operating System Pre-installs makes the whole thing tilted in Microsoft's favor. In anything to do with the Internet, that's what they're banking on.

    They're too easy to read, especially after all those trials showing their business practices.
  • I have an archive of the ToC stuff that I managed to find on my harddrive. You guys are free to view it if you wish.

    It is available at http://find.tetrinet.org/aol/ [tetrinet.org] . It should be up for as long as I the guys at AOL don't have a problem with it.

    I've got a copy of the ToC Protocol and a slightly old (but functional) copy of TiK in TCL.

    Do enjoy. =)

  • Re:Why use IM at all? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually, the IRC RFC states that onyl messages the other servers need to see are sent, not every message. It just happens the be almost all public messages since rarely are two people on the same server on a network as large as EFnet, DALnet, or even OpenProjects...
  • Where the hell is this client?! I've never seen it!
  • >and therefore increase participation in Mozilla. Because, after all, >the code is out there. Or maybe it wouldn't.

    It won't. Why? Because the Mozilla guys have shown that they aren't interested in supporting Windows 3.11, only Win95 and above which is silly considering the huge number of people still using Win 3.11/WGFW 3.11 on older laptops and computers. If this going to be their attuide, then why bother creating a smaller brower that'll only run on machines running Win95? The whole approach seems backwards.
  • You misinterpreted my post. I'm not trying to defend AOL. I'm providing the link for those who didn't get a chance to get the latest version of TiK.

    ---
  • ...and once the big, bad Microsoft dragon was slain, the fair America Online released its specification from captivity, and we all lived open-sourcely ever after. And there was much rejoicing.
  • I realize that they can pull back any code they want, as long as they generated it.

    Let me restate the question a little more clearly:
    AOL GPLs TiK
    Programmer X adds function Foo
    AOL copies function Foo into their AIM client
    Is AIM now plagued by the GPL "virus" ?

    This seems to be what the article was saying, but it was probably just a feature transfer and not an actual code transfer, so the GPL doesn't apply. (I can't imagine AOL being that idiotic.) The question, however, is more of a hypothetical legal one than anything else. If that had happened, would AOL be in violation?

  • There is already a space there for the ads. For now, it's not clickable, and just has the "MSN Messenger" logo.

    Did you really think that Microsoft (or any other corporation) would do this merely for the good of the others, without it being a profit opportunity?

    ---
  • I have seen and used AOL's mail client (as well as the rest of their service). That's why I switched to a real ISP.

    That was my point - people who realize that AOL's mail client is shoddy aren't meant to be AOL's customers. AOL is aiming for the people who prefer having few choices over being confused.

    ---
  • This is the thing that AOL has going for it. Their customers FEAR learning anything new or different. Try changing some of those AOL buttons around and watch them freak!

    AOL should capitalize on the techno-phobia of its users. Don't use that MICROSOFT thing, its different and scary!
  • >Also, there Mail service doesnt even allow External POP3/SMTP access.

    And Hotmail does? Hell Microsoft just changed Hotmail so you can't even use older browsers or lynx to login to the system, let alone read any email....

  • Re:AOL is doing The Right Thing (tm). (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think wat is meant here is that if ms gains 90 % market share they can effectively change the http/xml/css/... protocols in such a manner that only their browser can display it correctly. If they would try that right now (in fact, they are trying it but in a lesser extent, vbscript anyone ?) then too much people would complain that stuff doesn't show up correctly in their ns/opera/... browser. If ms has 90% there won't be that much complainers and therefore there won't be a problem.

    Only thing is, ms can thanks to software patents change the protocols in such a way that only their servers can serve the pages legally, therefore open source servers will become illegal, therefore linux will lose it's most important battle ground, the serving platform, and so ms wins the fight.

    That's why mozilla is so important. As long as it can get about 20% market share linux is home free and destined to replace windows in a couple of years, but if ms succeeds in taking over the net protocols (and i am convinced they believe they can, which is scary) they effectively take over the net and take the wind out of linux sails before it reaches the market share to no longer depend on the internet for usage increase.

    On a side note, this is the reason that ie isn't fully css/http4/dom compliant. Because they want pages developed for ie to look crappy in other browsers, and since they have the biggest share they get the most web developers behind them.

    Of course all of this everyone knows, and so my reiterating it is just to direct the discussion. Right ? Right !

  • Re:Why use IM at all? (Score:3)

    by edgy ( 5399 ) on Saturday August 14, 1999 @11:30AM (#1746569)
    One relatively unrelated note here:

    EFNET has gotten better lately as far as the script-kiddies, since it's much harder to get illegitimate channel operator access even if you resort to flooding servers, flooding clients, or the like. It's still possible in many cases, but with a large enough channel, and enough bots, it's next to impossible.

    While I'm the spokesperson for EFNET , I will agree that most channels on EFNET are crap. Then again, most channels on most servers are crap. You gotta find what's good and stick to there.

    As for IM versus IRC, IRC wins out. It's a lot more 'underground', in many cases.

    What I __WOULD__ LOVE to see, is some encrypted IRC servers for the major networks, and some clients to boot. Preferably 128 bit or better encryption.

    Even better would be to be able to share keys in private chats and among members of a channel, and keep even the server operators from being able to monitor the connections (since that's not what they do anyway) at any point anywhere in the chain.

    This would be a big boon to IRC IMHO, but it might be painted by the media as an area of complete lawlessness since there would absolutely no way the government can monitor conversations between people via the internet. We're talking no phone taps, nothing like that possible. This would be the first completely secure form of communication for large numbers of people.

    I could see the government making something like the scenario above impossible to achieve.
  • Obviously, a client that could be used as a base for a completely open source solution is a different matter.

    But with the client and the protocol, you can build a server. Of course, you don't have access to their database...
  • AOL should capitalize on the techno-phobia of its users.

    They already are, and have been for some time. "So easy to use, no wonder it's #1!"

    ---

  • Who cares? AOL spent the marketing effort to get the users, those users are theirs and theirs alone.

    If you want to make a new instant messaging paradym, then you create the protocol, you create the servers, and you make the snazzy new clients everyone else will want.

    Don't complain that AOL isn't giving away its users. It worked hard for them.
  • A new IM protocol can catch on in the same way that ICQ caught on in the first placing... by harnessing the power of teen chat. The client binaries have to be small, tight, and easy to send to your friends by IRC DCC or email. The user interface has to be cute... and how about *less clunky* at the same time. Free servers have to be in place, and somebody has to pay for that bandwidth. Maybe the chat client should include a link back to the server's web page so the server operator can put ads there, or something. Just an idea. There has to be a way to get free servers going.
  • GNU products in many cases are the glue that holds unixes together since we can have basic system commands that work the same across architectures. Less training costs, more productivity.

    Can you give examples where GNU products have stagnated? Where there's a real need for a version that has some feature that doesn't already exist, but isn't being made? Heck, if someone needs a feature that's not implemented badly enough, they'll code it themselves.

    GNU products in general don't stagnate.

  • ...whether you can use someone elses resources *without* their permission. Say for instance that a silk-screening shop created some really cool software to automate their shop. They decide to make it GPL.

    Now, does that mean that I can use the software in my shop? Yep, I'd guess so. But does it mean that I can just walk in to their shop and start a batch of shirt's to sell in my retail store? What? No? Why not? Their software is open source, isn't it? But does that mean that they'll refuse to let the local LUG use their shop to print shirts for their members? Maybe they won't have a problem "donating" a few shirts. Does that have anything to do with open source though? Does that give me the right to freely go in their and print shirts for my retail store because the LUG can? Well, what's the difference, huh? I mean, how could anyone be so inconsistant. Shame on them...

    It's the same with AOL. Sure they can make their protocol open source. Yep, they can even let others come in and use their servers. But that doen't obligate them to let everyone freely help themselves to others resources.

    MS can use the AIM protocol for all AOL cares, I bet. But on their *own* servers, not AOL's. Otherwise, MS can get off their behinds and start negotiating a contract with AOL to use AOL's servers to host their Instant Messaging service.

    In time we'll have a multi-vendor IM protocol that allows a bunch of servers to interopolate, just like e-mail does now. When that happens, AOL has indicted that they will support it. But until then, MS needs to pay up...

    Otherwise, I can't wait until the local video rental store starts using open source software to run the store. Free Video rental, anyone?

    -Brent
  • No one is preventing you from porting Mozilla to Win 3.x, so stop whining.
  • Leave it up to Microsoft to ruin the party for everyone else.

    Seriously though, with a tiny bit of hacking, you can turn a standard, run of the mill IRC server into something that will provide Instant Messaging services for a client. The pieces are there, just put them together.

  • It's a great article:
    http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_8/moglen/in dex.html
    up there with the Cathedral and the Bazaar. After reading it I finally understand the that AOL vs. M$ war is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

    Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5
    http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/Tragedy/macb eth/macbeth.5.5.html
  • AOL has made no efforts to recall Tik/TOC/whatever, they haven't been sending threatening letters, they haven't even been making specific efforts to break Tik/TOC compatibility with AIM.

    All AOL has done is 1)taken down one of their own a web pages; 2) tried to stop Microsoft and Yahoo client software from operating across AOL's messaging servers.

    I disagree with both decisions, but it isn't a big deal. In the first case, IT'S JUST A FREAKING WEB PAGE!!! In the second case, if Microsoft set up a special, say, Windows OS support network and stopped non-IE browsers from accessing it, I'd be a bit miffed, but it IS their network.

  • ummmmmmmmm... GPL violation? Unlikely. (Score:3)

    by gschmidt ( 18105 ) on Saturday August 14, 1999 @09:39AM (#1746585)
    TOC (the protocol that TiK uses, the protocol that AOL released specs for) is a pidgin, text version of the binary OSCAR protocol that is used by the "mainstream" AIM client. (AOL has a gateway box somewhere that speaks TiK on one side and OSCAR on the other. All this effort is because OSCAR is a much more powerful protocol and you could do lots of interesting stuff that AOL wasn't quite intending yet if you had the specs to it.)

    Also, OSCAR uses a weird, AOL-internal application framework similar to what's used in the AOL client. (In the beta version, you can actually pop up a console window and avail yourself to AIM's command language, complete with aliases and other random "features.") It's based on dynamically-loaded modules that talk to each other according to a special message-passing architexture.

    This would lead me to think that any code contributed to TiK would be of limited utility to the main AIM developers. No temptation to violate the GPL.

    [The information in this post comes from, umm, staring at the AIM login screen really hard and meditating. Yeah, that's the ticket.]
  • AOL was the same way as IBM, they were open sourcing the same as IBM. THe problems is that as soon as it does not benifit them anymore they dump it.

  • we need a distributed IM protocol (Score:3)

    by jetson123 ( 13128 ) on Saturday August 14, 1999 @10:25AM (#1746590)
    AOL's protocol is for building clients that talk to a central, proprietary server. That's undesirable for an Internet-wide IM infrastructure, and whether it's open source or not doesn't matter much.

    Instant messaging should work roughly like mail: distributed and ubiquitous, without ties to advertising or a single vendor. ISPs should provide the necessary infrastructure just like they provide SMTP services (in fact, some mailers have support for instant messaging, but that hasn't caught on in an ISP-based world).

    I wouldn't blame AOL for not building such an infrastructure--it just has nothing to do with their business. The open question is whether the newly commercialized Internet actually allows for new protocols like a vendor independent IM protocol to catch on and become ubiquitous in the same way SMTP, HTTP, and many of the other classic protocols caught on.

  • Some anonymous coward wrote:

    IRC does not scale

    Doesn't scale? Actually, in some ways I'd say IRC scales better...if the traffic gets excessive, people start new servers on the network which are closer. (I'd say it scales approximately as well as large FTP sites like Simtel [simtel.net] or Freshmeat [freshmeat.net]; Freshmeat in particular is actually mirrored on a large number of sites and one is routed to a server semi-local to one.)

    IRC does not have a user registration system

    Depends on the network, actually. The largest IRC network admittedly has no facilities for nick registration (then again, the largest IRC network is next to useless for many reasons). Second- and third-generation IRC networks, such as DALnet [dal.net] and SorceryNet have NickServ programs that allow registration of nicks...if someone else tries to logon with your nick, they have to give your password within 30 seconds or their nick gets autochanged. (You can also specify hosts that don't have to give a password.)

    IRC does not have offline messaging

    Again, this varies with IRC network and server. IRC servers on DALnet, SorceryNet, and other networks that use the DALnet server software do have offline messaging capability as long as your nick has been registered. The tool is called MsgServ, and when someone logs on they'll get a message to the effect "x messages are waiting for you. Type /msg MsgServ read 1 to start reading".

    IRC servers periodically split off because of the massive amount of traffic since IRC as a protocol forwards every single message, not just the ones the people on the other server are interested in seeing

    I've got some news for you...so does AIM. So does ICQ. The servers by definition carry every message on them, not just the ones one is interested in seeing! You just see the ones you're interested in seeing because you're in a chatroom (the exact equivalent of a room on IRC) or you are in private chat with a person on your Buddy list (the exact equivalent of either private chat (/msg) or DCC chat in IRC).

    The real reason IRC tends to lag is because of network conditions in GENERAL on modern IRC networks (like Undernet and DALnet and SorceryNet). They often have to cross country and worse...AOL actually uses multiple servers for AIM (and I expect for ICQ as well) but they're located in two or three places. I'll also note that IRC networks with two or three servers almost never experience lag problems; I've not yet run into serious lag on SorceryNet, for instance.

    As a minor aside...I have run into problems with network lag with ICQ (at times I honestly wish you could select the server you connect to; sometimes ICQ is so slow as to be unusable) and I know folks who've run into it with AIM too. The problem isn't exclusive to IRC. Just three problems, I can easily give you a hundred more if you like.

    Most of the problems I've seen with IRC versus "chat clients" such as AIM or ICQ mostly occur on EFnet (a first-generation IRC network which is mostly plagued by script kiddies). Modern servers such as DALnet and SorceryNet (and networks and private IRC servers using the DALnet ircii server) generally do not have the problems with script-kiddies and people on kick-frenzies, and have security for nicks and channels as well as less problems with netsplits. (And yes, I've seen the equivalent of netsplits on other chat clients; with ICQ "netsplits" you generally are unable to talk to the person even though they are still online.)

    In fact, I'll even go so far as to note that there are problems with AIM and ICQ that do not exist on third-generation IRC systems. Firstly, it is well known that the name registration in both AIM and ICQ are insecure and it is possible to spoof nicks (BUGTRAQ [securityfocus.com] has good info on vulnerabilities in the clients). Secondly, it is more difficult to secure non-private chatrooms in AIM (ICQ's chats are, essentially, the equivalent of invite-only IRC rooms; third- and even second-gen IRC servers allow one to set a room's mode automatically to only allow certain people in, or only allow certain people to post, and keep those configurations fairly permanently set even when one is not on IRC). Thirdly, you're relying on protocols which are largely proprietary and (as is being shown by the entire AIM debacle) permission for clones to operate can be revoked at a moment's notice leaving you to either buy a client from a proprietary vendor (if you use Windoze or maybe MacOS) or leaving you essentially SOL (if you use Linux or any other OS, or if you don't like giving AOL your dime so they can keep sending coasters, er, "try out AOL free for thirty days" CDs). It is rather difficult to start one's own ICQ server, and probably impossible to start one's own AIM server, if you don't like AOL's policies.

    Other chat clients are even worse. Ichat, a common "web chat" util, pretty much has equivalent function to IRC but with none of the security features of even first-generation IRC servers...I personally have seen script-kiddies spoof nicks, do kicks of entire channels, effectively take over entire servers, commit DoS attacks on users...and there is no way to set operator status on a channel (it's only server-wide, the equivalent of an IRCOp) and no way to protect users or channels from this sort of sillybuggers (not even bots to guard a channel).

    With IRC, on the other hand...third-gen clients allow all of the features of ICQ or AIM, with more security. IRC is an open protocol; clients are available for damn near every system under the sun (including DOS boxen as low as 8086's and old Amigas), most IRC servers are open-source (the complete source for the DALnet server, the base for most third-gen IRC servers, is available from their website; it's basically a version of the regular EPIC ircii server with extra features), and if you don't like the policies a server or network is doing you can get with friends and start your own server (this is exactly how SorceryNet started, btw; they thought DALnet's admins were being right bastards, so they took their toys and started their own network).

    The only problem is there are several IRC networks. I do know that at least some folks are working on various ways of letting them talk to each other, though...this includes gateways (I knew a person working on an experimental DALnet/ SorceryNet gateway, for instance) and clients that allow people even on different services to talk to each other (in essence the clients act as IRC/AIM/ICQ/whatever gateways).

  • That doesn't necessarily mean that the GPL is working towards removing copyright laws. Don't try and paint this into a picture it isn't.

    The GPL simply protects the source code, but it wouldn't be necessary if there were no way to limit access to source code.
  • hehehe - No, no no no. Microsoft take an existing, freely-available, well-documented, open-source project and integrate it into their own software? No way in hell. They're not smart enough to do things the easy way.

    TiK is based on the TOC protocol, which is text-based. My understanding of what Microsoft did is reverse-engineered the OSCAR protocol, which is binary, proprietary, and undocumented. _That's_ what AOL is pissed about.

    Microsoft didn't use anything related to TiK; they actually reverse-engineered AIM. It's not GPL; Microsoft didn't use any source code (probably). AOL just deided that taking TiK off their servers would be a good idea, just until this thing blows over.
  • i have a question, if someone is going to take AOL to court over this, (pending whether or not AOL re-distributes it's once GPL'ed code) who is it going to be? is it up to the developers of tik to do it, or can any disgruntled person go sue crazy?

  • Re:GPL in Court (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People here just don't get it. There will be no test of the GPL in this case. Microsoft is not using the GPL'd protocol; they're using one they reverse-engineered, the same one the official AIM client uses. Also, even though they GPL'd Tik, they are under no obligation to continue distributing it, since they are the sole copyright owners. What the GPL means is that if you have the source, you can keep distributing it, not that if AOL once distributed the source they can't stop. So there is no violation of the GPL. MS is highjacking AOL's servers, but that's it.
  • the program you speak of is already in progress of being built. it's called Jabber, and its approach to servers is very much like you describe; the servers communicate with each other in a decentralized manner, and they eventually expect for ISPs to host jabber servers the way they do mail servers now.

    the interesting thing is that they are building the capability for the jabber servers to connect to the ICQ and AIM servers, or anything else for that matter, and then translate those messages into jabber's XML format and send them to the jabber user. so you connect to the jabber network, but are also on ICQ and AIM despite being connected to one server..

    Jabber is also, btw, open-source.

    -mcc-baka
    INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS THEFT

  • huh? (Score:1)

    by mcc ( 14761 )
    "OSS for profit" is totally irrelivant in this particular case, since AIM is freeware anyway. AOL gets the gain from the fact that it lets users of their online service talk to people outside, thus letting the AOL users pretend that aol is an ISP.

    You may have a point about corporate mindsets, but in this case profit certainly has nothing to do with it.
  • Further evidence that AOL isn't killing TiK. They're not even bothering to remove it from their servers - just removing all links to it, so that anybody who doesn't already know about it won't notice it.

    It will come back. AOL isn't stupid.
  • AOL only took down the main page. If you still need a copy, you can download it here:

    http://www.aim.aol.com/tik/tik-0.75.tar. gz [aol.com]

    All of the other pages are also available through HotBot here [hotbot.com].

    ---
  • Mozilla is making progress. They are taking so long because they decided to ditch the original bloated Communicator source code and start a total rewrite.

    Also they are trying a lot of new and experimental techniques to make their browser small, protable and standards compliant. For example, they are trying to use a cross platform front end only using platform specific widgets when absolutely necessary. They also want their layout engine to be fast and standards compliant. Take a look at some of the latest Mozilla builds they are getting more impressive particularly as they are not even alpha yet. The Getting Involved [mozilla.org] page on mozilla.org [mozilla.org] gives some advice for those who want to help.
    --
  • AOL's reference implementation was GPL... I don't think the protocol itself was. I think it would be logically quite difficult to GPL a protocol.
    Ethan
  • This is really pissy news... All these companys either don't get it or don't want others to get it.. It is not about them anymore, their time is over....

    Can we all stand together and say, Fuck'Em.
    We have plenty of open source chat/messaging protocols and software pieces without their shoddy contributions...

    Just incase you don't know where we are headed (and god am i glad to see someone put all this down in a well stated manner - for i sure couldn't) check this out on first monday, Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright [firstmonday.org]... Damn good reading...

    --
    Marques Johansson
    displague@linuxfan.com

  • Tik (Score:1)

    by suprax ( 2463 )
    I want to make sure that everyone can still get Tik from http://irc.themes.org. It's always available.

    --
    Scott Miga
  • Even so, any group that "reviews" its committment to the open source community when its wallet becomes threatened needs to be "reviewed" by the community in turn.

    Corporations will always be about profit first, and everything else second. You can't change that. The best you can do is try to get them on your side and stay there.

    ---
  • I agree, I don't think the Open Source community is an ally of AOL and never has been. I can't imagine them releasing the entire IM protocol as an open standard either becasue they are in a dominant position (just like Microsoft with Office, Windows, etc). Personally I don't care if IM ever becomes a standard as I don't have a use for it. However if Microsoft want to show commitment then they need to open up some useful formats such as those used in office or the entire Win 32 api which would be more useful to most people than a stupid IM protocol.
    --
  • While the Java client (that was the original reason for the TOC protocol) wasn't open source... the TiK (Tcl/Tk) client was GPL.

    where GPL stands for GNU General Public License
  • Even though AOL has done away with development of tik, we still have the code. I noticed the page was gone a couple months ago, and it never came back. I urge people, mostly those with ample space and a domain to host some sort of Tik development project to continue it without AOL. The software is really a good little program, with some nifty features. So... if anyone is up for this... maybe drop a note on freshmeat if you have something set up... something like that...
  • But with the client and the protocol, you can build a server. Of course, you don't have access to their database... And without their database, it's useless. That's exactly the point. Nobody else can make their own Instant Messaging system that's worth anything, because AOL has the users.
  • According to this Infoworld report [infoworld.com], a Microsoft "munchkin" mailed Richard Smith of Pharlap software that AOL was using a buffer overflow exploit to detect whether someone was actually using the MSN Messenger to log on.

    (In case you don't know, a munchkin is someone who works for a particular company and posts FUD etc. under an alias. This is a known Microsoft tactic, already practiced in the war against OS/2 years ago).

    And if this Reuters report posted on Usenet is true [deja.com], Microsoft actually confirms that it was a munchkin of theirs, but they "didn't authorise his smear attempt".

    What's ironic that that guy at Microsoft decided to contact Richard Smith of all people, since he is well known for revealing secrets in Microsoft(!) software, such as the Registration Wizard [pharlap.com] and IDs stamped on Office documents. Bad luck for the Microsoft munchkin because... Richard Smith then discovered that the sender used the Yahoo mail system and had set up the account that day. Apparently, the sender was not aware that Yahoo includes IP addresses, which Smith used to trace the message back to Microsoft.

    What does all this show?

    1. Another example of a Microsoft employee who would do anything to help their cause. This has already been pointed out in commentaries on the MS vs DoJ trial: Bill Gates may not have said literally to destroy their competition but certainly his employees understood it as such in their zealotry.
    2. AOL was very desperate in finding a way to detect non-approved clients. With an open protocol this can indeed be very difficult.
    3. If you care about security for you or your users, don't use AIM, ICQ or MSN Messenger. Resist user demand and block 'em at your firewall. They gobble up loads of attention and productivity anyway.
  • As far as I can tell, MOST of the current 'big' companies dont give a hoot about Open Source. Look at the big companies 'supporting' Linux now: AOL/Netscape, Oracle, Sun, etc. Most of them seem to be putting out a version of their software for Linux in order to help get Microsoft.

    They work under the assumption "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", but they dont "get it". Larry Ellison at Oracle doesnt want a world of free software, he wants Oracle to be the monopolist that Microsoft is.

    The biggest exceptions to this rule seems to be IBM--they actually seem to be putting their money where their mouth is and releasing code.

  • That's not the point. They're both open source, and AOL controls both of them. What would happen if mozilla.org suddenly disappeared one day? Sure, the code would still be open source, if you can find it. Think Mozilla will stand a chance against competing browsers if that happens? You can run it on your system, but how many others will be doing the same?
  • All the GPL gaurantees is that source is distributed with the binary or source is available for nominal cost if you distribute only the binary. Anyone with the TiK source can redistribute it under the GPL, but AOL has no requirement to keep their servers open to outside users, other than to maintain goodwill.

    You can argue against their actions and their motives. You can call them misguided or even evil, but recognize that they have every right to do what they are doing even though they "did the right thing" and released TiK under the GPL. If you don't like the control they exert over the instant messaging arena use IRC or roll your own.

    Don't think for one minute that AOL does not understand and desire the control that owning the servers gives them and that they would give them up to please you. Don't expect the god of Open Source (all hail his name) protect you from your own greed. Yes greed. You want to use a service that has significant maintenance costs without reciprocating or paying because it is the most convienient to you. You are willing to blind yourself to the fact that you are in fact paying for this service by making it ubiquitous and locking yourself into a proprietary solution on proprietary servers. Don't cry now. Open source is an excellent hedge against commercialization in many contexts, but where there is money spent, there must be money made so either all parties participate equally, as in SMTP or you pay the piper.
    --
  • I'd suggest that you go away, but we know not even who you are, as you've chosen to be an anonymous coward.

    Try to be more thoughtful in your responses. I didn't celebrate the end of copyright law, I just suggested that everything the GPL protects would be in great peril if copyright laws ceased to exist.

    That isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, what being a "Microsoft Toadie" is.


    Kids these days....
  • There is no AOL client because anyone using Linux would be too smart for AOL to be of any use. I wouldn't be suprised if Linux couldn't connect to AOL dialup servers. NT(P.o.S.) can't.
  • Who cares? AOL spent the marketing effort to get the users, those users are theirs and theirs alone.
    What!?! They are not "their" users! They are AOL's customers, but that doesn't give AOL the right to treat them like commodities. And for you to then defend them, as though their aspirations at monopoly were just their way of making an honest buck... it might be their way of making a buck, but it's manipulative and has everything but the users' best interest in mind.

    Empowering users is the right thing, but AOL has time and time again shown that it doesn't want to do that. It wants to make users dependant, and the features it offers are only to seduce, not to enable.

  • It would be far more honest, then, if the FSF would just come out and say they're trying to abolish the copyright laws (which I doubt they are, or they would say so openly). It would be just plain dishonest to lay out a thin coating of protection, get people to contribute to the effort, and then yank away that protection.

    Oh, and the above two sentences: The GPL is only needed as long as copyrights exist. If there were no copyrights, there would be no need for GPL, since by definition all sources would be open. should be printed in fancy gold lettering at the bottom of any correspondence from people who believe it to be the true aim of Open Source. So they can be avoided like the plague by creative people who value their work.

  • You're talking about a fantasy situation. Of course there will always be ways to limit access to source code. It's called distributing software in binary form only. It happens all the time.

    If copyright law disappeared, it would not suddenly become impossible.
  • i have a macintosh, and a number of friends who are on AOL and refuse to get a real ISP.

    the macintosh native AIM client has some rather serious stability issues related to accidental modem disconnects. if this happens while AIM is in the background, it tends to crash AIM, taking the remote access out with it and forcing me to restart.

    here's my question: i've used TiK in LinuxPPC, and it seems to be pretty nice. so i've been trying to run it inside of the macintosh TCL interpreter, in hopes it will be more stable than normal AIM. Unfortunately it won't run-- i open tik.tcl in the wish8.0 application and it says "can't find file toc.tcl" or something.
    I'm not sure exactly what to do about this. I looked in the file and noticed it had several "exec" commands, which it says in the README do not work on the macintosh TCL version.

    Has anyone used the macintosh TCL interpreter who could help me some with this? Or point me to a place where i could look up what to do? would it be difficult to modify Tik for the macintosh version of TCL?
  • First, this won't affect Mozilla. People should stop crying its potential death. Mozilla is an open source project and will remain an open source project, unless hell freezes over.

    Second, as another poster said, a Windows 3.1 port is possible, but someone will have to do it themselves, just like those people who are doing the BeOS, OS/2 and Amiga ports. The thing is, no one's stepped up because there aren't enough Windows 3.1 users fanatical about their operating system to do it.

    Besides, I imagine Mozilla would have serious problems running on most Windows 3.1 hardware (like my 486 DLC/40). It had enough trouble display webpages with graphics. Imagine trying to display an entire UI using the layout engine on it! Potential porters would be better off taking the layout engine and somehow making a chrome specifically for W3.1.

  • Re:Incomplete packages released as Open Source... (Score:3)

    by edgy ( 5399 ) on Saturday August 14, 1999 @02:08PM (#1746629)
    There's nothing stopping those users from using MSIM or anything else. AOL is not blocking them from using it even if they're connected to AOL.

    I don't see anything wrong with AOL keeping other clients from using their server resources and their users, especially if it's an attempt at a coup by a competitor.
  • Hey all,

    Could someone please point out quite what is so good about AOL ? I work for a small internet company that is starting to get moving in the world, but in order to stop those from aol complaining we have to get an account ourselves to check out what the sites look like. It makes our lives such a hassle. Why do they have to do the micros~ and redifine the internet for their own capitalist needs ?

    OK so it is a good thing that the (allegedly) simple controls are easy to use, but couldn't AOL at least *try* to explain that the internet is not owned by them ? I have read on many sites that people from AOL have attempted to report them to the "Internet Police" or the "Aol supervisors" for content which is not to their liking. For example "Joke a Day" at http://www.jokeaday.com [jokeaday.com] is a site that features a free joke mailing list in which some of it's jokes are a little controversial. Some are about religian (but *all* religians are subjected to humiliation) some have rude words in. The signup letter shows clear instructions that state such jokes will be said. The guy running it has a letters page from those who write in... guess who complain the most ? Please understand that I am no way affiliated with this site... but take a look for true evidence.

    So, to get to the point, AOL *PLEASE* start to get your act together and share a little. Free software is great and as such I am running Linux, but at the end of the day we all need to be fed. Therefore is it too much to ask for a decent service for these people that can point out the relevant infomation as stated above ? I am English so I don't know about elsewhere, but many ISPs websites have a brief guide to netiquette stating the simple request of being polite...

    is it really too much to ask ?
  • Hopefully this will go to court, and we will find out how the GPL stands up. If it does stand up, that's great; we now have a precedent. If it doesn't, then it's better to find out now, and see what can be done about fixing the problems.

    TedC

  • Okay, so this isn't too likely, but in any case, it's hard to predict human actions:


    Maybe AOL/Netscape's abandonment of Mozilla would encourage people to show that no, we won't just go away, and therefore increase participation in Mozilla. Because, after all, the code is out there. Or maybe it wouldn't.

  • Could they do the same to Mozilla? A scary thought...

    The two really have very little to do with each other. TIK/TOK is a published spec to a private system operated by AOL. Mozilla [mozilla.org], for all intents and purposes, is an independant opensource project that AOL happens to pay a lot of developers to work on. They can't simply announce that they're no longer going to support HTTP :)

  • From the article:
    Ironically, some of the features that open-source developers have added to the TiK client, such as news feeds and file transfer, have been incorporated into the latest versions of AOL's AIM offerings.

    I wonder if they used any of the actual donated code in their newer AIM client versions. Doesn't that mean that they have to release the source for AIM under the GPL? (Note that I know nothing of AIM, have never used it, and have only seen it from a distance)

  • AOL doesn't allow POP3/SMTP simply because there is no need for it. Anyone who knows what POP3 and SMTP are, probably isn't using AOL.

    Most AOLers would be dumbfounded if presented with more than the 4 or 5 options AOL's client provides. The AOL client wasn't built to be stable, efficient, or small. It was designed to be easy to use. Very illogical and stupid at times, but overall, it's the easiest thing a newbie can get their hands on.

    They're not targeting nerds, or even people who are moderately computer-literate. They're targeting newbies. People who leave their Caps Lock on when typing in their password.

    By the way, this is why AOL passwords are case-insensitive, 6 to 8 characters, and alphanumeric ONLY. If the password contains any non-alphanumeric characters, they are simply ignored. Heheh.

    Ok, I guess I wandered off a bit... I'll shut up now.

    ---
  • Also, you're forgetting the fact that AIM has ads. When people use Microsoft's servers, they're using AOL's servers to send and receive messages, while Microsoft receives the ad money, since they're the ones hosting the ads now.

    ---
  • Isn't this the exact scenario that RMS warned us about?

    This is when a company decides that Open Source is cool, lures us in with the allure and then takes it away just as we most need it. Coming from AOL, though I am not really shocked that they are doing this. ..

    Now, I am not familiar with which license AOL used, but I'll bet that it isn't GNU.

    BTW, I'm one of the few who has never used AOL IM. Haha. You want instant messaging? SENDMAIL is your answer!
  • I am basing this on the assumption that AOL is the one that GPLled the TiK source.

    If AOL GPLs something, as the copyright owner, they don't have to abide by it. HOWEVER, if they incorporate some code by some other author (who owns the copyright to his own code), they have to abide by the rules of the GPL for his code.

    Bottom line: Any copyright holder can change the license (as well as release the code under different licenses) at any time, and the copyright holder itself does not have to abide by its own license terms.
    --------
    "I already have all the latest software."

  • I downloaded Tik and TNT last night via the links I found on freshmeat.

    Since a lot of my friends are using Aol or Aim, this is something that I'm interested in. When I first read about this story on Linux Today, I fired up Gaim (a GTK aim client) and within a few minutes one of my buddies was online and we sending instant messages like normal. I think this is ZDNet trying to put an MS spin on the story and trying to get open source people mat at AOL.

  • AOL isn't blocking TOC/TiK clients, they're not actively attempting to create specific interopability problems either. This is a clear sign that they're not out to destroy TOC/TiK, but simply attempting to do damage control as quickly as possible.

    Isn't blocking TOC/TiK clients, and creating specific interoperability problems, what they've been doing all along? They seem determined to drive open source people into the arms of microsponge, which is probably quite an accomplishment.


    Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
  • First of all, no-one's losing sleep over whether Mozilla stays open or not. We can assume Netscpae 4.6 is the last browser we're going to get. Secondly, most of these companies pledging support for open source project don't yet know that they're really dealing with are students who want to learn about computers, not companies with lucrative business offers.
  • For a REAL instant message protocol check out Caliban, which actually provides real authentication and encryption:

    http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~bucy/IM/ [cmu.edu]
  • actually there is a group doing one. It is compatable with aim and icq and will communicate with irc servers too. Its called jabber and its being devolped at http://jabber.org stop by #jabber on irc.openprojects.net for more info (and to play with infobot :) )
  • I think that AOL is doing the right thing. However I also think there should be a universal messaging standard. To elimate most of the server problems associated with a universal standard either your going to have to make the ISP's run the servers or your going to have to have the clients run the servers. The problem with client ran servers is that some of us (ME!) are behind firewalls that won't allow the proper packets through. Now if you have the ISP's running the server your going to have to deal with the ISP's which will be tough. I mean no ISP is going to adopt a new service and start running it overnight, it will have to be tested and re-tested ......... But honestly there is a problem here, I was at a friends house and he was running 3 chat clients. That just isn't right.
  • >No one is preventing you from porting Mozilla to Win 3.x, so stop whining.

    First of all, I don't use Win 3.1 though I've a number of friends who do and quite frankly were turned off by this attuide towards them. It's really funny in a way. You Mozilla guys who are whining about how you really can't get people to contribute to Mozilla, then you cop this attuide that quite frankly reminds me of the HURD and BSD crowd's attuide towards the people who ended up deciding to work on linux instead and you can see what that attuide got them.
  • Something I don't understand is why everyone wants to use IM. IRC is an open standard that achieves everything IM does, and more. Your notify list is tantamount to a Buddy list, and if you stay out of channels and remain invisible, you can stay away from the usual IRC childishness and spam.

    Has anyone looked at making an IRC-based IM-esque client?
  • ...or "Open Source is not equivalent with free software".

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