Reminds me a bit of the old dispute between AOL and GAIM, which was later rename... | Hacker News

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_delirium on May 20, 2015 | parent | context | favorite | on: “I'm wiping this repository away”

Reminds me a bit of the old dispute between AOL and GAIM, which was later renamed to Pidgin in part to appease AOL. WhatsApp seem to be acting in an even more aggressive way than AOL was, though. AOL limited themselves mainly to: 1) complaining about the name; and 2) playing occasional games with the protocol to break third-party clients. Afaik they didn't sue anyone claiming that simply distributing a third-party client was illegal.

kuschku on May 21, 2015 [–]

There was recently an article from a person working at Microsoft who implemented AIM support in MSN Messenger back in the day who had similar experiences.

tacticus on May 21, 2015 | [–]

Which was a really entertaining article when microsoft were also doing it to block trillian and other third party clients.

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