Related Systems
This is a list of open-source systems which offer functionality similar
to Gale's. I don't aim to review or compare them, merely to list them with a
brief summary of each project/product's goals, features, and some rough
architectural notes.
This is not an exhaustive list, but feel free to
tell me about more
systems.
This is probably the most serious competition out
there. They take a different approach to messaging, seeking to unify the
available systems under a common interface, allowing people to communicate
between all of them. They use XML for protocols. They have a snazzy Web
site with a lot of plans, and a "1.0" server. In theory, Gale and Jabber
could be roughly orthogonal, though I don't know how Gale's philosophy of
using end-to-end cryptography would fit in.
This is John Bucy's nascent instant messaging system.
It is probably the closest to Gale in spirit, though major differences
exist. The page refers to "tomorrow" and "this summer", but is almost a
year old (as of this writing). Do I smell... vapor?
Corridors is touted as "A Services Suite to Replace Internet Relay Chat".
The only information available is a very high level design document
which outlines a set of good requirements but fails to specify any
implementation details. I don't know if there's anything more concrete
behind the scenes.
KiT (Keep in Touch) is an open-source (GPL) instant
messaging system. They have a custom protocol, with several server and
client implementations. It was "designed from the ground up to be extensible
and secure", and it is the only other instant messaging system I am aware of
that uses strong encryption (IDEA on RSA, in their case), though I believe
the system still requires a trusted server. They keep presence information
in MySQL.
Lily is "an interactive Computer Mediated Communications (CMC) server"
(read: chat) developed at
RPI.
Lily is highly stateful; the server keeps track of everything (including
logs). For the moment, this limits Lily's scalability to single-server
systems (and resource consumption per user is high). The Lily system is
conceptually derived from MUD and MOO systems.
Launched from a
discussion on kuro5hin, SecureIM isn't so much an
IM system as an encryption protocol designed to be used on top of existing
instant messaging systems (much as PGP, GPG, and S/MIME are designed to be
used on top of existing e-mail systems). They do plan to implement a simple
proof of concept IM client to demonstrate the protocol. As of this writing
(17 July 2000) the project is newly launched and 100% vapor.
Whozon (a Perl/Tk program) offers instant messaging without any servers
for Windows and Unix. It connects directly to other clients, and can
optionally use shared Web pages (via HTTP PUT and polling) to publish IP
addresses for dialup clients.
Teaser was the server, Firecat was the client. This was
not an instant messaging system per se, but it did offer location
and presence notification, allowing clients to rendezvous for a variety of
purposes (including instant messaging) using the protocol of their
choice. This software is "no longer maintained due to advanced state of
development of Jabber and GNU ICQ packages".
As you might guess from the name, ICGnu hoped to make a GPL ICQ equivalent,
with clients, servers, and their own protocols. As of 20 July 1998, they
had no actual code, but a lot of design activity. ("Town Council" anyone?)
It looks like the project died; the mailing list
was
dissolved "due to inactivity levels of the ICGnu lists and the
apparent death of the project" on 22 October 1998. Rest in peace.
Standards
The IETF's Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol working group aims
to define standard protocols for instant messaging. They've been through
many years of committee paralysis, but there are some signs that they
may be waking up.
IMUnified is an industry consortium to enable interoperability between
commercial vendors' instant messaging products. Founding members
include AT&T, Excite@home, iCAST, MSN, Odigo, Phone.com, Prodigy,
Tribal Voice and Yahoo!. They claim they will respect the IETF's
efforts when they bear fruit; in the meantime, they are working on their
own interoperability "standard", due for release to the public in
August 2000.
This is AOL's proposed "Open IM Architecture Design". They propose what
is actually a surprisingly well-thought-out way for different instant
messaging systems to exchange traffic with each other.
Clients for Commercial Networks
Rather than building complete open-source instant messaging systems,
these programs act as clients for other, commercial instant messaging
services. This makes them less interesting to me, but they're still worth
noting.
TiK is a Tcl/Tk client for
AOL Instant Messenger.
This client is free, though the server is not. TiK was originally developed
by
AOL, but is now "abandonware",
maintained (on SourceForge) by a community of open source
developers.
"The Penguin Pimpin' IM Clone That's Good For the Soul", GAIM is an
open-source, gtk+-based client for
AOL Instant Messenger.
Everybuddy aims to unify the client portion of AIM,
ICQ, Yahoo! chat, and other popular instant messaging services. In this
respect, they seem to be similar to Jabber, but rather than using a fancy
client-server system with XML and all that, they just have a single gtk+
client application that accesses all the relevant servers directly.
Too numerous and uninteresting to list here, these all
use Mirabilis' ICQ servers, but supply different clients for various
platforms and interfaces.
LinPopUp is a "Linux enhanced port of Winpopup, running
over Samba". WinPopUp is apparently a Windows-based messaging program,
presumably superior to "net send". It's GUI-based, using gtk+
(I think).