MSN Messenger to end after 15 years
bbc.com
bbc.com
http://www.hypothetic.org/docs/msn/sitev2.0/notification/exa...
As it evolved, MS made it more complex by changing many commands to be dependent on XML and SOAP, but 3rd-party clients could still reverse-engineer and keep up. There's been talk and some action on open-source Skype-protocol clients but I haven't seen anything concrete materialise - maybe if all MSNP servers shut down, the Chinese will up their action on Skype.
The interesting thing is that MSNP8 as of now is still functional (and I'm outside of China) - the servers are still up and presence/messaging works. Probably not for much longer though, sad to see it go.
At least Skype is "the devil you know". Skype would have to be reverse-engineered regardless, so at least now you no longer have to worry about MSNP.
Anything that doesn't get replaced by XMPP or an equivalently good and open protocol is pretty meh regardless.
The main difference I see between MSNP and Skype is that much of MSNP could be figured out in a day just by sniffing packets, which is probably what lead to a proliferation of alternative clients and client libraries for it. The (deliberate?) complexity of Skype means that RE attempts are more difficult, so there are fewer people with the skills and inclination to do it. Hopefully there will be more focus on it now, but it's still a huge effort in comparison.
Personally, I'm not too fond of XMPP either; something more similar to IRC would be my preference. But all of that doesn't matter when almost everyone you know used/uses MSNP/Skype, and from experience it's very difficult to change that, so any progress toward an open-source Skype client will be great.
Yes. I'm sure you know yourself: It's very ugly at the low level, it barely supports the minimum feature set to call it an "instant messaging protocol", and let's please not forget that is is a closed, proprietary protocol regardless of how readable it is on the wire. Microsoft has full control over it and can decide at any moment to... well, for example, shut it down.
Not saying skype is better, just glad to see crappy proprietary tech die out.
Not if people decide to write their own server software for it. i.e. Something that you most certainly can't do easily with Skype as it's leaps and bounds more complicated to reverse-engineer.
"Not saying skype is better, just glad to see crappy proprietary tech die out." What? Let me rephrase how I re-read your sentence: "Not saying skype is better, just glad to see crappy proprietary tech get replaced by even less open and more difficult to reverse-engineer tech."
Why would you be glad about that? You're contradicting your own viewpoint about how bad "proprietary tech" is by advocating it's replacement by an even more "proprietary tech"
Still a pity to see it go (nostalgia..)! I kind of owe it the start of my "entrepreneurial" career building a website for MSN related resources (when I was 14, learning the basics of SEO and earning some Adsense money and later on programming and releasing addons). It was also great to see how Microsoft embraced the community around it!
The halcyon days where IM was somewhat private.
Shame they took so long to bring it to mobile devices, too.
Since I find the actual Skype client to be one of the worst pieces of software ever written I've started introducing everyone to GTalk/Hangouts and so far most are changing over.
I ended up phasing myself off MSN Messenger not too long after. Still a "place in my heart" type situation.
Apart from none of those are actually chat programs, except for Facebook Chat.
I'd say the biggest chance is the fact that all of them are web-centric or mobile-centric.
And if we are counting Facebook's Chat, most people I know uses Talk (Google+ Hangouts).