AOL AIMs For More Openness, with a Catch

by Joe Brockmeier - Mar. 06, 2008Comments (7)

The instant messaging world became just a little more open on Wednesday when AOL released Open AIM 2.0. Some of the requirements attached to the release might still turn off open source developers, though.

The first release of Open AIM was in 2006, but that release was missing some vital documentation -- specifically, for the core protocols that work with the AIM backend. Now, theoretically, developers can write libraries/clients that authenticate and communicate just like AOL's official client without having to decipher the protocol first.

Of course, the hard lifting there has already been done by the Pidgin (formerly Gaim) project which provides libpurple -- a library that handles the actual connections to various instant messaging services (including, but not limited to, AIM). The libpurple library is used by Pidgin (a multi-protocol IM client for Linux and Windows) and Adium (a multi-protocol IM client for Mac OS X).

Even if the Pidgin project hadn't already deciphered the AIM protocols, AOL's restrictions might be a bit of a turnoff -- specifically the license requirement that "if your application exceeds 100,000 peak simultaneous users, you must implement Advertising" as one of two mandatory features. It's hard to say whether Pidgin ever hits 100,000 simultaneous users -- Pidgin probably has at least 100,000 users, but 100,000 at a time? Maybe not.

At any rate, this restriction isn't compatible with open source licenses -- you can't dictate through an open source license what features will or won't be implemented. The GNU General Public License (GPL) doesn't allow this, nor do any licenses that pass muster with the Open Source Definition.

So AOL has taken another tentative step towards openness -- but still falls short of actually meeting open source developers on their own terms.

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier works for Novell as the openSUSE Community Manager.


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7 Comments
 

I dont think it would be easy for AOL to catch up with likes of Meebo and ebuddy. But it would be interesting to see how AOL tackles it.


Srini

http://codingweb.blogspot.com


0 Votes

I think one of the things about AIM 2.0 effort is that they are quite late with this one and they are basically hoping that this keeps AIM relevant considering that MSN and Yahoo can become one very quickly. JAbber is slowly and surely becoming a very strong option for open IM networks and other real time communications.


0 Votes

The way google has implemented their chat is awesome. I see them taking on guys like Meebo in the web space. On the desktop side, there are just too many options available now, and the first set of people to make it easy to do web + offline in a synchronized experience will have some shot. I don't think pure-plays here will make much more sense...


Interoperability is nice, and I don't see any closed source company now seeing value in a continued investment here, given that people who are online are now spending more time on social networking sites...


0 Votes

"AOL claims that since the Open AIM effort debuted in 2006 more than 235,000 developers have signed on to the program."


Wow. How many of them actually rolled out stuff here?


I'll show ads? What's in it for me, other than a shitty experience and privacy concerns for my users (assuming, of course, I hit the mark of # users)...


0 Votes

Why shouldn't AOL profit from this?


0 Votes

I agree with the comment above about how MSN and Yahoo may quickly become a formidable combo in instant messaging, if Microsoft does acquire Yahoo. That combo plus the trend toward open source multi-protocol IM apps will give AIM a run for its money.


Sam


0 Votes

In some of the stories it notes that AOL will be announcing revenue sharing next month - so that those '100,000 simultaneous' will actually be getting a healthy percentage of the ad revenue.


They've also sweetened the pot for individual developers with the contest at TopCoder (topcoder.com/openaim). Pretty interesting.


Steve


0 Votes
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