[JDEV] Jabber DevZone News - AIM Transport, AOL, and Jabber

[Jabber DevZone]

AIM Transport, AOL, and Jabber

The following was posted by jer at jabber.org via the Jabber DevZone web site (http://dev.jabber.org/):

It began Monday, when the IPs of some of the larger Jabber servers
offering the AIM Transport as a feature 
(such as jabber.org and jabber.com) found their IP addresses
firewalled from the AIM login servers.
After discovering this, it took only minutes to move aim.jabber.org to
another IP, but then it seemed
that something had changed at the protocol level and AIM logins were
being disconnected abruptly.
The AIM Transport was quickly updated to correct the login block and
service was restored.  This happened
again Tuesday and Wednesday, with more relocations and updates to fix
new incompatibilities as they appeared.
The service is currently working on jabber.org, and should work fine
for any other independent server installation
using the AIM Transport.

What's troubling about these events is that, these are AIM/AOL users
who have chosen to use alternate
software to access only their valid account.  This software is open
source and accessible to anyone, poses
no security risks and operates identically to an official AIM client. 
Jabber is not competing with AIM 
and simply trying to offer users a basic freedom to control and choose
their software and service providers.

The Jabber movement represents individuals, software developers, and
companies that are committed to
interoperability and working collectively to build interoperable
protocols, software, and services.
Knowing this and that Jabber poses no directly competitive or security
threat, 
it seems clear that AOL is not yet interested in interoperability or
participating with an open movement to 
find solutions.  I have hope this can change.

Open invitation to AOL:  We welcome any contact from you and
participation in Jabber to help find an open solution
to the problems you face.  We're ready and committed to assist you in
building an interoperability solution, 
we already fully meet and surpass your stated requirements and are
willing
to grow and adapt as needed.  We want to start a conversation and do
this the right way, and not have to battle you 
just to provide users the freedom of choice.

http://jabber.org/?oid=770