Microsoft Introduces IM Licensing

prostoalex writes "The MSN Messenger ban of outside clients and cited security issues might be explained by yet another Microsoft move. The company's Internet unit, MSN, contacted third-party providers like Trillian and Odigo with a suggestion to buy access licenses. From the ZDNet article: 'Running an (IM) network is expensive,' said Lisa Gurry, group product manager for MSN at Microsoft. 'We can't sustain multiple other people's businesses, particularly if they charge for certain versions of their software. We're introducing licensing processes for third parties like Trillian.'"

Whaddya gonna do

[Locky]

There's nothing you can really argue here, It's Microsoft's network, they can do what they want with it.

I encourage everyone to support the Jabber protocol, open and free for many clients to use, including the next revision of Trillian Pro.

Time to make your friends switch to Jabber.

[MrHanky]

And so should you do. It's just as easy to deal with as MS Messenger, it works on many platforms, and it's free. Now you see why free as in Microsoft gives it away is not free as in free.

I recommend Psi [affinix.com] for both Linux and Windows, but I'm sure there are other clients that are just as good.

Re:p2p IM

[quantum bit]

It's called Jabber [jabber.org].

Not P2P, but it's decentralized like e-mail so anybody can run a server and chat with people on other servers.

Converting users to another protocol...

[Khad]

...is really hard. All the people in my contact list are using msn messenger and they don't want to change. They say: why should I install another software if this one works well? I can tell them whatever I want about free software but they don't care: msn messenger I shipped with windows and they want to use it. There's nothing I can do...

Re:And so you should be

[I KNOW MARTIAL ARTS]

SSL, not ssh. And it was plain text up until the protocol that shipped with MSN Messenger 5.0 (protocol MSNP8). This just happens to be the version that you are required to update to after the cut-off date.

And they didn't just make it easy to reverse engineer, they published the original version and attempted to make it a standard with the IETF. Google for MSNP2.

Re:Time to make your friends switch to Jabber.

[I(rispee_I(reme]

The above post was about Miranda IM, and should've been previewed. Here [sourceforge.net] is the real link. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

Re:Time to make your friends switch to Jabber.

[Anonymous Coward]

ICQ's servers can back up your contact list.

ICQ's protocol hasn't changed in a looooong time, either. I'm still running a really old (official) client and it works fine.

Just disable "auto-update" in the registry and it's fine.

Its not really so bad

[WhiteKnight07]

Check the trillian fourms. [ceruleanstudios.com] AOL tried this sort of thing before and failed. The trillian guys just patched to keep up.

Re:I think the interests of the Open Source commun

[blixel]

Relative to pretty much anything that matters, yep.

Considering the time scale, I wouldn't say 30 years was recent when dealing with phones which have only existed for little more than a hundred years. (Invented in 1876 but not popularized until years later.) 30 years is almost a quarter of that time. That's not exactly recent. *Relative* to my own life, I don't consider the things that happened when I was 20 (a quarter of my life past - I'm 27 now), "recent" events in my life.

Re:Time to make your friends switch to Jabber.

[Zirtix]

There are loads of public Jabber servers out there, and they're not overloaded. As Jabber usage grows, so will the number of servers. Look here [jabber.org]

Re:I think the interests of the Open Source commun

[einhverfr]

I see cell phone companies selling cell phones that only work with their network.

Not so fast. I know a thing or two about telecom (but am certainly not an expert). I think the perception of the "cell phones that only work with our network" is a great invention of the cell carriers. But here is the thing--

Most cell phones work based on one of three standards: Advanced (I call it Ancient) Mobile Phone System (or AMPS), Digital AMPS (or DAMPS), or more frequently GSM, as AMPS and DAMPS are old and of much more limited capacity than GSM.

A GSM phone authenticates on a network by using data stored in the SIM chip. If you swap SIM chips between cell phones, you have essentially swapped the accounts (and carriers) that the cell phones use! See your owner's manual for directions. I believe however, that special phones may be needed for advanced features such as CDMA (which is necessary for some services as it allows bandwidth to be sold in more flexible ways than TDMA).

Think about it-- if a cell phone was only useful on one network, than how would roaming work?

Of course, what usually happens is that the cell companies will refuse to give you just the SIM and require you to buy a cell phone in order to get one. So your analogy is actually sort of clear, where MSN is requiring people to obtain a client *from them* in order to use their service. Of course this comes free with Windows.

But on a larger level, I don't understand why Microsoft is doing this-- the vast majority of MSN IM users use the MSN Messenger which Microsoft offers free of charge with advertisements. I honestly don't know anyone who pays attention to the advertisements, and the Windows Messenger (which is supposed to be part of a *corporate* messaging suite) also has advertisements.

Maybe it is to block Desktop adoption of Linux, but this does not make sense to me either-- strong alternatives exist including Jabber. From a corporate viewpoint, Jabber is at least as good as Exchange Instant Messenging, and because you don't have this UI lockin, you can extend it in many ways. Instead, I think Microsoft should be opening up the network further so that they can allow many people to help produce products that make the IM functionalities of Exchange compete better with Jabber.