NINA: Rebuilding the original AIM, AOL Desktop, Yahoo and ICQ platforms | Hacker News Reader

NINA: Rebuilding the original AIM, AOL Desktop, Yahoo and ICQ platforms

nina.chat

84 pointsecliptik52 comments

What I truly miss is the short era, when it looked like Jabber is going to win the chat world. At least here in Europe, ICQ was on its way out. Both Google and Facebook had interoperable XMPP servers. It ended very shortly after that, but it was good for the year or two while it lasted.

For me it was xfire/icq => msn/skype => teamspeak 2/3 (short mumble) => discord

Since Champions Online, Cryptic Studio's game chat server used to be Jabber compatible, too. I don't know if it still is, I haven't had a Jabber client running in a while. It might still be.

There was something really cool about getting MMO Guild chat (or Fleet chat in my case as a big Star Trek Online player at the time) in your normal IM client.

That was also about when we discovered the server would let you create channels that would be global across all the games (and any IM clients). I still tend to refer to Champions Online and (Cryptic's) NeverWinter Online as "Holodeck Adventures" for that reason, because I'd commonly play those in the days of my very active STO Fleet until people started chatting about STO in the global fleet chat.

I was just talking about this the other day... it was nearly a panacea of interconnected, interoperable messengers. My memory shortened it to a few months, but I remember it pretty well. The protocol sucked, but it did work.

I really miss the group chats on Yahoo that included voice. X spaces is close-ish, and I know that discord and others have similar features... just feels a lot less connected.

> panacea of interconnected, interoperable messengers

It's a miracle we still have this with email.

The trouble with email is there's so much spam, spam and bulk email it's almost useless as a practical communication tool.

My legit email often gets buried and neglected for days.

Facebook never had an interoperable server. They operated a limited functionality gateway to allow using your own client, but it never worked well and never federated.

Unfortunately, the dev refuses to opensource this and the Escargot rewrite. There's a FOSS AIM server[1], and apparently it supports ICQ, which is new from the last I saw it.

[1] https://github.com/mk6i/retro-aim-server

Yeah very annoying. They ask for donations constantly but are enjoying keeping everything for themselves.

Especially since the original Escargot server software was open source.

I have a lot of love and nostalgia for aim and AOL and think it would be a fun motivator to learn more programming with a project like that but not without sharing.

I saw that referenced from an OCC challenger:

https://occ.deadnet.se

Here you would try to reuse your old computer (usually 15-20 years old) for common tasks done in 2025. The web it's a no-no minus a few services but you would surprised. Hint: yt-dlp+mpv set to 480p and below, Retrozilla+ a TLS hack in about:config, fake User Agents (PSP, Opera Mini...), https://legacyupdate.net with a Gemini client and gemini://gemi.dev with the News Waffle proxy, RSS news delivered from Usenet with GMANE... there are tons of hacks.

Patching the old clients it's often usually easy, even more in case of AMSN (TCL). It's a matter of changing the URL of the service and maybe some slight API change.

Escargot covers the MSN services, which is similar to NINA:

https://escargot.chat/

From the NINA site:

> Yahoo! Messenger support is publicly available and interoperates with our Escargot network.

the sad thing about this is what made it magical before was the people that were on there, and it’s impossible to get that back now!

same with IRC except IRC never went down.

... and never will :)

Spaceships bearing our genes will still beam IRC from somewhere down deep in engineering.-

What would be the purpose of launching a decaying lump of monkey meat into space when the AI can explore just as well with a tiny fraction of the mass requirements?

I'd wager that it will be AI's using IRC from space, but IPv6 still won't have replaced IPv4. :)

> wager that it will be AI's using IRC from space, but IPv6 still won't have replaced IPv4. :)

You are indeed totally correct on all points!

(But IRC it will be :)

Ditto with Usenet albeit there's always cool people there.

no but apparently you can have some kind of coup on one of the most popular servers and cause a huge dent in it...

Yup, they can probably rebuild ICQ the way it was when I was 16 but they can't make me 16 again.

Hmmm… my wife constantly reminds me that I behave like a 16 y/o child. Perhaps ICQ should be reborn!

Attention: Incoming divorce/separation detected, find shelter soon!

what made it magical was us being younger. likewise, it's very likely impossible to get that back.

Also, it was a time when being “online” was an active state. Now we’re “online” passively 24/7.

Yes, this is it. "Logging on" and "Logging off" were explicit actions that you took as part of your day, instead of just being perpetually connected and reachable.

The internet used to live in a room.

The invitation to join the project's Discord is magical. That's... where all your friends are now anyways.

Cool project, kudos to the devs, even though (as other comments say) it seems rather pointless. Some things better stay in the past while you enjoy the nostalgia once in a honeymoon.

I loved the original AIM. I remember using it from roughly 1999 to when it was finally deprecated in 2017. Almost 20 years!

I’m so bummed I didn’t think to log in before it shut down and grab my buddy list and stuff.

Ah nostalgia. My text message alert (when my phone is not on silent) is the "incoming IM" sound from AIM.

at maximum gain, of course, to startle you into a heart attack.

> We're working to primarily rebuild the original AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), AOL Desktop, Yahoo and ICQ platforms as close to the originals as possible, and document the entire thing.

Why not contribute to one of many FLOSS implementations that were once maintained?

So Adium and Pidgin?

https://adium.im/

https://pidgin.im/

Or Bitlbee, but no. Here there are reimplementing the server side of the protocol.

AIM, MSN and ICQ are reimplemented in a form that even legacy patched clients should work as they came minus the server URL patch.

These guys are reverse engineering Skype now too. Really cool stuff.

https://nina.chat/news/120500000101270/icq-now-in-open-alpha...

Are Pidgin/MrandNG supported?

You might need to patch Pidgin/Libpurple plugins.

An example for Escargot (MSN):

https://codeberg.org/transgirlphoebe/msn-pecan/commit/2bac1e...

Repo: https://codeberg.org/transgirlphoebe/msn-pecan

We're working on not needing patches.. We have an installer in the works, but in the mean time check out https://github.com/pidgin/retro-prpl

There are binaries in the action artifacts, but like I said an installer is coming soon (tm)

What is the story for security/encryption to exist in a modern threat landscape? I expect with server-based systems you could have an encrypted tunnel to the server and just connect to a local proxy, or ??

Arugably, ICQ is still going....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ

ICQ was not QQ. The ICQ service finally shut down last year IIRC. I don't think QQ bought out the ICQ service or anything.

That's why I said 'arguably', perhaps I should have been more clear in stating that QQ is more like a spiritual successor, although I thought the linked Wikipedia article made that clear enough.

Dunno, last I tried it was very different and I couldn't login to my original 5-digit icq number.

Unless they bring back personal filing cabinet, AOL will remain dead. I attribute the entire death of AOL to the death of cerver and mp3z

What a way to make me feel old. Nice project. :)

Create the Internet you want to see.

Someday someone will do a project like this but for Discord.

Hangout.fm is like AOL chat rooms with music

so basically Trillian?

Other side of the equation. Trillian was an unofficial client, this seems to be a group running a series of unofficial servers that can be used with the original clients, and presumably also contemporary unofficial clients.

I'm also aware of the P3OL project which supports AOL 2.x and 3.x clients.

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