Gaim
Update on the AOL/Jabber saga
This afternoon, I (Eric) received an email from an AOL executive, and after a series of exchanges, we came to the following agreement. Because AOL seems to have the upper hand in this, Rob and I were forced to settle for some things we would have prefered not to have settled for. TOC is getting updated; there will be a version 2 of the protocol, and the old version will be dropped. gaim will therefore stop supporting TOC v1 and Oscar and only support TOC v2. AOL will provide us with a GPL library that we can use, and will also add the necessary hooks in gaim. In return for this, they expect us to add advertisements to gaim. Fortunately for gaim, they have not mandated that all ads be from AOL, so gaim will now be selling ad space to those interested. AOL has also offered me a job, and I've accepted; I'll be working on AIM for Linux in addition to gaim. Meanwhile, Jabber will continue to be blocked, and I (this is the part I had to bend over for) will be helping block Jabber. Anyway, that's the deal.
* Update: 04/01/2001 2:37PM PST *
I just talked with Rob and learned that he has accepted the job as well. It looks like he and I will be co-workers on the same team both extending linux AIM as well as blocking jabber.
The fun continues
AOL is no longer requesting aim.exe. They are now requesting proto.ocm, a different file in an AIM installation. (Stunts like this make it difficult to have a server that provides "correct" values to use, and impossible to embed aim.exe, unforunately.) We've gotten a lot of email with support and suggestions for circumventing the problem, and to all, thanks. Needless to say, Oscar from CVS is not currently working (I've been on vacation the last week, and won't be back until Sunday, Apr 1st, but I will be able to work on gaim some today). TOC is still working (at least, when the servers are working), and you should use that.
Please do NOT flame AOL, or anyone that works for AOL. The Jabber team is trying very hard to have some sort of dialog and agreement with them. It is important, though, that AOL knows that people are upset that they are working against interoperability. But please, be polite when requesting that AOL representatives talk to people from Jabber. And remember, show your support for Jabber by registering a jabber.org account (you can do this through gaim - load the Jabber plugin and click "Register" at the login prompt).
* Update: 03/30/2001 6:15AM PST *
I got especially pissed off that TOC is down and put in a temporary fix for Oscar. CVS should be working, though it's likely it won't be later this afternoon.
Blah! Alright, use TOC
Aaight guys, looks like Oscar's not working again. For the time being, please switch to TOC by going into tools->accounts (or accounts from the opening screen) and clicking on Modify. This will allow you to sign on without being disconnected. Bad news is, you won't be able to read other people's away messages without IMing them. Good news is, you'll be able to receive files (and send files if a windows user right clicks your name and hits 'get file'). Enjoy!
* Update: 03/27/2001 2:11PM PST *
We'll try to keep things working as much as we can. If you experience problems with Oscar, try out the CVS copy. It's possible that we've implemented a fix. If not, keep trying, heh. If you don't feel like messing with it, please switch your account type to TOC. Everything should work fine.
* Update: 03/28/2001 1:52PM PST *
We know what's causing the Oscar disconnects, and there's not much we can do about it. Here's why. The current CVS Oscar status is: Able to connect, with chances of disconnects later today or tomorrow.
0.11.0-pre9 - Ahhhh yeaaah
Well, that didn't take too long. Adam of Libfaim woke up this morning and fixed libfaim and we're back online once again. Thanks for the quick work, Adam! There's also a couple new goodies in this release. The GtkIMHTML Widget takes on the Gtk theme color properly and a few other things. Enjoy!
AOL's doing funny things again and again and again :-)
If you are using gaim to sign on to the Oscar servers then you may notice the following message:
(11:23:52) AOL Instant Messenger: You have been disconnected from the AOL Instant Message Service (SM) for accessing the AOL network using unauthorized software. You can download a FREE, fully featured, and authorized client, here ...
If at all possible, please go to tools->accounts and switch your AIM account to TOC. Eric and I will work on getting this resolved. Until then, simply wait it out. It's probably more problems with the war on Jabber (tm).
-- Rob
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