"The Open AIM program gives smaller companies, Web communities, and developers access to the code base of AIM Triton, AOL's next-generation IM client, and the ability to create their own versions of the AIM service," writes Ryan Naraine at
eWEEK.
The move represents a change of strategy for AOL, which has long guarded access to its chat network, according to Naraine. Naraine says the move was inspired by the emergence of "mashups," or web applications that draw information from several sources. The move comes as Yahoo, IBM, Microsoft, and others are promoting competing chat and collaboration products for the enterprise market, and as VoIP operators such as
Skype offer open chat networks.
The Open AIM kit is free for commercial applications, with some restrictions. Applications designed for mobile device deployments require licensing, as do those that use wireless telecommunications networking. Additionally, custom client usage appears to be limited to 250,000 client invocations per day, or two million per month, unless otherwise licensed. Additional details can be found in an FAQ,
here.
The
eWEEK story can be found
here. Also of possible interest is an earlier
eWEEK story about AOL's
enterprise chat software partnership with phone- and video-conferencing specialist WebEx.
The Open AIM SDK is available
here.
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