Comment Re:The Free Software Community is going too far... (Score 1) 149
"I have every right to say that AOL are a bunch of evil, corporate, power hungry, internet-wrecking bunch of snivelling shits until they decide to cooperate with the rest of the world."
Well, you do have a right to say that. What does it have to do with your right to use their servers?
Now, moving on to reinforcing a couple good points from the parent post in this thread, AOL doesn't have to make their client work with other IM services - they can choose to stay proprietary forever if they want to, and that's their right. It's their server, and the official client is free, but comes with advertisements to defray the cost of running an IM service that supports as many users as AOL's does - in effect, running a third-party client without advertising (which is pretty much all of them I've seen, since most people hate ads) is running a client that makes them lose money; do you expect them to sit back and watch that happen?
The TOC and OSCAR protocol difference is a compromise - TOC lets third-party clients use the AIM servers, but to get all the features, you need acess to OSCAR, which they keep proprietary. Granted, that's anathema to people who like open source and open standards, but from their point of view, it's a concession, and a fair one - we'll let you use our service, but if you want full features, use our client. How is that evil and power-hungry? Keep in mind that AOL is trying to make money, and while they may not be as enlightened about openness as you are, it's not illegal or immoral to try to make money.
If you want AOL to open up, the way to do it is NOT by coming up with clever hacks to use their servers when they don't want you to - that makes them want to squish you, not cooperate with you. If you want them to open up, encourage people to use other services - Jabber is a prime example, and a good idea. That's the way to get them to start playing nicely with other people's clients and protocols, though it may be self-defeating in the end - AOL will still want to tmake money, and if everybody has a third-party client, you know how they'll do it? Subscription fees for the service.
