ICQ Replacement?

[Ka-shu Wong <kswong bigpond com>]

I dont know if this is the right place to post this message, but i dont
know of any other places that i can post it, so... :)

For a while now i have been playing around with the idea of writing a free
replacement for ICQ.  I mean, not just writing a clone of the client
software, but replacing both the server and the clients with a free
replacement that has similar functionality to the ICQ network.  Of course
there'll be a new protocol that fixes all those problems & security
loopholes in the ICQ protocol. :)

Anyway, this is the ideas that i have come up with so far...

Each user will have an address in the form of username@server.address ,
where server.address is the DNS address of their 'home' server.  Probably
using the @ to separate the username and the address isnt a good idea,
since it could be confused with email address, but that can be worked out
later... Having a home server solves the problem of having a single 
central server that can break down easily.  It also allows the possibility
that ISPs can run the servers as a service for their users, in much the
same way that ISPs provide email addresses for their customers.

The status of a user is determined by querying their home server.
Messages can also be delivered in much the same way, being relayed to the
recipients' home servers from where the message is retrieved.

The server also maintains a 'list' of people that the user has authorised
to be on his contact list, and only responds to queries from the
authorised users.  This also allows for the possibility of revoking
someone's authorisation, which is useful sometimes.

Anyway, thanks for reading this far, and if you have any ideas, please
reply. And of course there will be a GNOME-aware client... :)

KS