...and another relatively straightforward and open protocol is finally completely replaced with a heavily obfuscated proprietary one. I've worked with MSNP including writing a working client for it, and it was quite easy to do; it's mostly text-based:
As it evolved, MS made it more complex by changing many commands to be dependent on XML and SOAP, but 3rd-party clients could still reverse-engineer and keep up. There's been talk and some action on open-source Skype-protocol clients but I haven't seen anything concrete materialise - maybe if all MSNP servers shut down, the Chinese will up their action on Skype.
The interesting thing is that MSNP8 as of now is still functional (and I'm outside of China) - the servers are still up and presence/messaging works. Probably not for much longer though, sad to see it go.
How is MSNP "horrible", specifically? You've worked with it?
The main difference I see between MSNP and Skype is that much of MSNP could be figured out in a day just by sniffing packets, which is probably what lead to a proliferation of alternative clients and client libraries for it. The (deliberate?) complexity of Skype means that RE attempts are more difficult, so there are fewer people with the skills and inclination to do it. Hopefully there will be more focus on it now, but it's still a huge effort in comparison.
Personally, I'm not too fond of XMPP either; something more similar to IRC would be my preference. But all of that doesn't matter when almost everyone you know used/uses MSNP/Skype, and from experience it's very difficult to change that, so any progress toward an open-source Skype client will be great.
> How is MSNP "horrible", specifically? You've worked with it?
Yes. I'm sure you know yourself: It's very ugly at the low level, it barely supports the minimum feature set to call it an "instant messaging protocol", and let's please not forget that is is a closed, proprietary protocol regardless of how readable it is on the wire. Microsoft has full control over it and can decide at any moment to... well, for example, shut it down.
Not saying skype is better, just glad to see crappy proprietary tech die out.
"Microsoft has full control over it and can decide at any moment to... well, for example, shut it down."
Not if people decide to write their own server software for it. i.e. Something that you most certainly can't do easily with Skype as it's leaps and bounds more complicated to reverse-engineer.
"Not saying skype is better, just glad to see crappy proprietary tech die out."
What? Let me rephrase how I re-read your sentence: "Not saying skype is better, just glad to see crappy proprietary tech get replaced by even less open and more difficult to reverse-engineer tech."
Why would you be glad about that? You're contradicting your own viewpoint about how bad "proprietary tech" is by advocating it's replacement by an even more "proprietary tech"
Well from the practical perspective what happens is what zo1 wrote: "crappy proprietary tech get replaced by even less open and more difficult to reverse-engineer tech". What's more likely - former MSN users switching to XMPP or to Skype?
Awesome to see you here. I've probably spent hours browsing your documentation and msnpiki. There was quite a great community around building "hacked" addons (MsgPlus) and bots for MSN Messenger :)
Still a pity to see it go (nostalgia..)! I kind of owe it the start of my "entrepreneurial" career building a website for MSN related resources (when I was 14, learning the basics of SEO and earning some Adsense money and later on programming and releasing addons). It was also great to see how Microsoft embraced the community around it!
Microsoft also recently killed off SkypeKit which allowed 3rd party applications to interact (text/voice) with the Skype platform on Windows. They are saying as it wasn't cross platform it wasn't a good solution however it has crippled Trillian (and others) which I used daily for Skype.
Since I find the actual Skype client to be one of the worst pieces of software ever written I've started introducing everyone to GTalk/Hangouts and so far most are changing over.
I worked on a few features in MSN Messenger, and I'm sad to see it pass, but the time had come. I hadn't logged in to use it for almost five years when it was shut off in the US.
Though primarily an AOLIM and Yahoo Messenger user back then, I remember when MSN Messenger’s "British phase-out" occurred around 10 years ago [~2004?]. I had a couple folks from the UK in my list, and we had to go over how else to chat [AOLIM, Yahoo].
I ended up phasing myself off MSN Messenger not too long after. Still a "place in my heart" type situation.
There are several people I do not have contact info for that I have fleetingly seen on my MSM account in KTP in the last year. It will be a shame if they shut off their XMPP servers, because then I have no way to reach them.
I appreciated the ability to have a messenger running on the computer which would always notify me of new messages, instead of having a Facebook tab open in the web browser.
http://www.hypothetic.org/docs/msn/sitev2.0/notification/exa...
As it evolved, MS made it more complex by changing many commands to be dependent on XML and SOAP, but 3rd-party clients could still reverse-engineer and keep up. There's been talk and some action on open-source Skype-protocol clients but I haven't seen anything concrete materialise - maybe if all MSNP servers shut down, the Chinese will up their action on Skype.
The interesting thing is that MSNP8 as of now is still functional (and I'm outside of China) - the servers are still up and presence/messaging works. Probably not for much longer though, sad to see it go.