Re: Software in main that is throughly useless without non-free software
On Sun, May 02, 1999 at 08:07:15AM -0700, Joseph Carter wrote:
> And yet there are two attempts out there to write a free ICQ server. The
> specs are published. Nobody has released one yet but so what?
>
> If the protocol is published the lack of a free server AT THE MOMENT
> should not penalize the software.
>
> TIK obviously needed some information on how the AOL messaging service
> works or it couldn't have been written. The same information could be
> used to write a free server at any point.
Again, it is a what-level question:
AOL has published (unoffical) specs, but they have a lot of holes in them
(IE are barely usable).
AIM&ICQ have published (unoffical) specs, but they don't fully cover current
non-free server versions.
TIK has a published offical spec under an almost-free licence (if I remember
correctly, you can't use it in a way which is dispariging to AOL) -- but I
can't recall the location of the upstream source to check. Sombody want to
mail it to me?
Is an offical, free, spec as good as a free server? What about an unoffical
spec? What about a partal spec? Slippery slopes are annoying things. Low
mu, and everybody knows mu is good for answering unanswerable questions.
-=- James Mastros
--
"They are never alone that are accompanied by a nobel thoughts."
-=- Written on the US Library of Congress
cat /dev/urandom|james --insane=yes > http://www.rtweb.net/theorb/
ICQ: 1293899 AIM: theorbtwo YPager: theorbtwo
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