Re: ICQ for Gnome

[Kevin Birch <kbirch pobox com>]

On 5/5/98 12:30 PM Guillermo S. Romero / unnamed / Familia Romero
famrom@ran.es said:

>They will, cos they want a propietary system. It free (money) now, but do no
>expect freeness in the future. Thats the "because" I do not use or like ICQ.
>
>IMHO we should implement a new one, based for example in IRC.
>It will be rather easier to create a bot that connects to a given IRC
>network (or scans all) joining a special group of channels where bots
>negotiate connections. Channel names should be of the kind "#free_comms_xxx"
>where xxx is the first three letters of your bot nick (so waiting bot are
>connected there, and searching bots know where to go to find someone).
>You can use PGP or any other crypto system for negotiation or for all comms.
>
Well I'll be the first one to admit that depending on an external
proprietary protocol is not such a good idea, but one shouldn't discount
the usefulness of a true ICQ client.

I think that parallel development of something like what Guillermo has
suggested would be excellent, but there are different reasons for the ICQ
client.  Namely, they already have versions for the most popular OS in
the land, and have millions (literaly) of users.  By having a nice GUI
client, all of us Linux users won't have to depend on the pathetic Java
client.

As Sean Gabriel (gtkicq author) has suggested, the functionality of ICQ
should be rolled into a library and then this can be used by people
making more comprehensive communications packages.  This way we can have
a fast, native ICQ client for Gnome/GTK, and not restrict future
development of other apps.  Sean also speculated about CORBA, which could
add another layer of coolness to the ICQ lib.

Cheers,
Kevin

Çheers,
Kevin

--
Kevin Birch
kbirch@pobox.com