[JDEV] Thoughts on AOL Time Warner (and a legal solution)

[Scott Cote]

In my opinion a legal solution will not be needed if the non-AOL
IM world can do the following:

1. Create and clearly document a simple yet powerful set of standards
that include protocols, semantics, and extention mechanisims.

(I have hopes that IMUnified will be able to do this, but who knows, 
maybe it could be the Jabber community)

2. Create a freely available and comercial implementations of these 
standards that are of high quality and very interoperable.

(This is where open source groups like Jabber are vital!)

3. Get the other large commercial IMs to sign on to these standards in 
a fully interoperable way.

If these things happen I strongly belive that the tide would begin to 
turn (slowly at first). After AOL lost enough market share I think
they would sign on or be left in the cold.

To win we must be less innovative and work on the less exciting things
like documents and stability. Hey, at least its more exciting than legal
references. :)

-Scott Cote