Re: ICQ

[Christopher Jason Morrone <cmorrone@UDel.Edu>]

On 30 Jul 1997, Stephen Witt wrote:
[cut]
> So, I would hate to see the continuation of a proprietary solution to 
> a particular problem by the free software development population of
> the general public.  It goes against nearly every basic part of the
> Linux/Unix/IP philosopy and in the end denies us functionality and
> choice.

I pretty much agree with you.  However I also think that something like
ICQ might be neat.  I'm thinking of an app with a nice little interface
like ICQ's, but uses already well established IP tools.

I, like many others, find it very difficult to tell when my friends are on
line.  The University of Delaware has some X.500 thing installed, so noone
can finger into the university and find out if you're logged in.  And even
if they could, they might have to guess which computer you're
on...although there are ways to make a finger daemon search multiple
computers, I know, but more often than not people don't.  (Too much work
on top of what they already have to do I suppose)

I'd like an app that will announce to a central server that I'm online (or
maybe distributed servers that communicate with each other for better
stability), and that my client can check to see if my friends are logged
in, where they're logged in, etc.

Then it could fire up a talk client for you easily.  Personally, I think
that ytalk is all I need.  Its excellent.  Might need to implement some
kind of ability to accept talk requests built in to the client on MS and
Macs and such...I don't know, I haven't thought this out too much yet.

In any event, there should be an RFC, and the source should be free.  And
if it isn't written soon ICQ will take over the world. :)


--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-user-request@lists.debian.org . 
Trouble?  e-mail to templin@bucknell.edu .