Thing is that situation is much worse because there are no official APIs for most of the networks (most popular ones) this project aims to support - and it means constant uphill battle eventually doomed to fail. In addition to that if the project will ever become something more than just a gimmick then I think that entities like FB, Apple will use active countermeasures: technical and legal to discourage authors.
Those were all free too if I remember correctly?
Yes they were, except I think Trillian had a pro version.
I remember those! It was free forever then later on that Trillian Pro came around. Adium was my favorite during that time.