AIM 5.x and 6.x going down?

[Mark Doliner]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 7:36 AM, Gonzalo Amor <gamor at interactiveni.com> wrote:
> I received confirmation from an AIM partner that they are about to shut down
> the protocols for clients 5.x and 6.x?
>
> Will this affect pidgin?

I guess it's hard to say without more detail.  Short answer is "probably not."

Long answer is:
* It seems extremely unlikely that AOL will stop using the ENTIRE
protocol used by 5.x and 6.x clients, because I believe the major of
this protocol is shared by 7.x clients.
* It's possible AOL will stop allowing the old auth scheme ("BUCP" aka
"MD5") to be used.  But Pidgin supports a newer auth scheme called
clientLogin (I think it's the default now), so this wouldn't harm us
too much... it would just mean users wouldn't have to auth schemes to
choose from in the event that clientLogin stops working.
* It's possible AOL will stop allowing us to use clientLogin.
Unfortunately AOL shut down their OpenAIM program, so clientLogin
isn't really a "blessed" method of authentication anymore.
* A combination of the last 2 bullet points would be bad.  It would
mean Pidgin couldn't log in anymore.

--Mark