Gaim Now Pidgen IM
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on April 8, 2007 at 2:56:15 PM
Tragic news as Gaim is renamed to Pidgen IM. There goes me saying it is better than AIM. Another grave misuse of IP and copyright laws.
Quote
Many years ago, when this project was first started, it was called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger." AOL naturally complained, and Mark Spencer changed the name to "Gaim." AOL was appeased, and no one really ever heard of it because there were very few users back then.
A few years passed, AOL trademarked "AIM," and started refering to their IM services under that name. They complained. The issue was brought up on Slashdot, and the developers at the time got some legal support. That legal support advised that the ongoing discussions with AOL be kept confidential until fully settled, and so it remained. Everyone thought the issue went away then. It sorta did, in that AOL stopped responding to the legal support for a while.
Our legal support has changed several times, and each group of lawyers have recommended silence & secrecy. Around the time of the first 2.0.0 beta, AOL came back into our lives in a very strong way, this time threatening to sue Sean.
This represents a clear pattern. AOL received more pushback than they expected, and would sort of let things stand for a while. They they woudl threaten a different Gaim developer. Each time a new Gaim developer was threatened, we had to look at new legal support.