The Null Device

Lock-in through lock-out

Microsoft to lock third-party clients out of MSN Messenger, to protect market share prevent freeloaders from not viewing ads crush the opposition upgrade security and protect you from viruses/terrorists. (After all, everybody knows that software not from Microsoft is a security risk, right?) This will happen from the 15th of October. Unless Gaim manage to not get kicked off (and if this is about protecting MS's ad revenue, that's unlikely), chances are I won't be using MSN after that.

There are 2 comments on "Lock-in through lock-out":

Posted by: jb

Thu Aug 21 08:39:05 2003

the rumours may be exaggerated: see http://www.trillian.cc/forums/showthread.php?s=e3454b3177f3c4f4aece1c4fc835273a&threadid=42884

Posted by: acb
http://dev.null.org
Thu Aug 21 09:39:13 2003

The above link doesn't want to load here.

Anyway, if connecting to MSN requires a client licence key of some sort, I doubt they'd give one to an open-source piece of software, as anyone could then modify the software to violate Microsoft's security in whatever way they hypothetically changed the protocol to stop. So if MS give Gaim a license, it will be for signed binaries of some sort.

Of course, it may be reverse-engineered just like the DVD encryption keys were. Though using that would be strictly illegal.

Want to say something? Do so here.

Post pseudonymously

Display name:
URL:(optional)
To prove that you are not a bot,
please enter the text in the image on the right
in the field below it.

Your Comment:

Please keep comments on topic and to the point. Inappropriate comments may be deleted.

Note that markup is stripped from comments; URLs will be automatically converted into links.