MSN sends RISC OS clients packing | Drobe.co.uk archives

MSN sends RISC OS clients packing

By Chris Williams. Published: 16th Oct 2003, 17:51:09 | Permalink | Printable

Only one lone survivor [Updated]

MSN carried out last night their desire to lock out third party clients from the MSN instant messaging network. By switching to a new protocol and requiring an SSL based login system, MSN ideally wanted "unauthorised" clients to be barred from their popular instant messaging system. Their network, their bandwidth, their rules, you might say.

Where does this leave RISC OS clients? Phil Hardy's MSN client cannot log into the MSN network at all now, although he has released the client's source code under a BSD licence so that people can attempt to fix the client and bring it up to date.

The Natter developer hasn't returned our email yet, but the free demo version fails to connect to the network. Natter author Russell Palmer seems unconcerned however, as the Natter website reads: "I will be focussing my efforts on updating natter to work with the latest MSN protocols, and see no technical reasons why natter will not continue to work after the changes are introduced".

R-Comp's Grapevine has seemingly escaped unscathed after users received an SSL update earlier this month. A few users initially reported login problems to us, but the majority of people emailing us have confirmed Grapevine is still working as usual.

"My understanding is (at the time of writing), MSNP7 and earlier have been disabled, and of the three RISC OS MSN apps, only Grapevine is still working", R-Comp's Andrew 'so modest' Rawnsley told us earlier.

Update
Russell Palmer of Natter fame got in touch with us and had this to say: "I am working towards solving the issues, but unfortunately I cannot give you a date by which I expect to have finished. It will be a matter of weeks, rather than days. Of course, ICQ operation is still completely functional!"

Links

Microsoft Mum on Third-Party IM Licenses from eWeek

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Discussion

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Grapevine certainly isn't working here.

imj on 16/10/03 6:30PM
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Does that mean you can't logon ? Which version are you using ?

Grek1 on 16/10/03 6:42PM
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How many lone survivors can there be, exactly?

rob on 16/10/03 7:00PM
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IMJ - I'd be interested to hear what version number of GV you have, and let us know the particulars of the fault - email rcomp@rcomp.co.uk please, or reply to the last upgrade you received. I can confirm I've been chatting to other GV users on Grapevine all day, so it *should* work. If you're having trouble, then obviously we'd like to get you sorted. Bear in mind it is the show this weekend, however, so it will be next week before we can reply.

arawnsley on 16/10/03 7:00PM
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I've got version 1.16 and it won't log in to MSN. It appears to connect to the server but won't log in.

Also, it does funny things to some icons on the iconbar. For example, it's just made the fresco icon go invisible! :-O

MENTAT on 16/10/03 8:44PM
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Well MSN's attempts are ideal seeing as I use a third party client on my PC called Easy Message. It's only 200k (compared to 6m of MSN 6) which is excellent and it works fine. I'm sure that when all clients support the latest protocol, they'll work fine too. -- Smiler -

Alex Melhuish

Smiler on 16/10/03 8:44PM
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I'm also running the 1.16 version which was sent out just recently - login just doesn't.

imj on 16/10/03 8:54PM
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Hmmm, Grapevine 1.16 works perfectly here. No problems with login at all nor any disappearing iconbar icons.

Grek1 on 16/10/03 8:56PM
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Grapevine 1.16 works just fine here also. -- Victor Shears, Maidstone

vshears on 16/10/03 9:06PM
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I am using Grapevine 1.16 and I am having the same problem as mentat with the iconbar and it's icons. Also when I right click to load the msn part it hangs the computer and I have to use Atl-Break to stop it.

cfrog on 16/10/03 9:32PM
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Guys, please read above - we need reports via email, NOT here. It is the wrong place. If you contact us via email, we can actually sort your problems, and get traces and so on. So, please no more "me too" posts (either way!). When emailing, please include details of machine spec, and software running.

arawnsley on 16/10/03 9:52PM
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Probably the only good thing about Microsoft making their changes is more people going out of their way to buy Grapevine.

Snig on 17/10/03 11:05AM
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Or just use irc, open, free, better. [link]

mavhc on 17/10/03 5:24PM
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Tssk. Define 'better' in this context.

MENTAT on 18/10/03 12:49PM
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This is an article about MSN clients working/not working. So clearly there will be "me too" posts here - can't be helped

I've emailed too, now, though. Me too! :P

MENTAT on 18/10/03 12:52PM
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Could I just add (a) when Microsoft announced they were changing the goalposts the clock started ticking furiously - most software development doesn't have a specific deadline by which it has to be ready at all costs, and (b) the Grapevine mailing list is a better place to raise problems than here.

inchiquin on 20/10/03 3:28PM
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inchiquin: See my previous post re. comments innit. :-p

Also - woo, version 1.17 has arrived in the email. Now I just have to survive ROUGOL and get home to see if it works.... *crosses fingers and stuff*

MENTAT on 20/10/03 5:36PM
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And 1.17 looks prettymuch as bust as 1.16 ... still sits there trying to log in.

imj on 20/10/03 6:09PM
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Well, 1.17 helps several of the people above, IMJ. Perhaps because you never reported your problem to us (via email, as instructed), and therefore never completed a trace, your problem isn't fixed???

arawnsley on 20/10/03 11:29PM
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Appologies if the above sounds a little "grumpy", but clearly we can only sort problems that are reported through the normal procedures. That's how the other issues have been dealt with :-)

arawnsley on 20/10/03 11:33PM
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As with 'imj', 1.17 doesn't work for me either

Trace file sent to grum^h^hem R-Comp...

MENTAT on 23/10/03 5:29PM
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We're testing a 1.17a at the moment which copes with more oddities in the multi-stage login process. Some of the problems seem to be due to very slow responses from some of the servers in the chain....

arawnsley on 23/10/03 10:54PM
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The odd thing is that Yahoo has started this 'Me, mine, and nobody else' attidute with 'their' client a few months before Microsoft made this similar decision.

Oh well. IMHO we are better off with IRC. If those lamers just learned to use proper standards then we didn't need this bulls***.

And as someone else mentioned. Lucky that ICQ still works correctly perhaps in time ppl will realise this and start using that more (untill they decide the same).

Regards,

Manu T

epdm3be on 24/10/03 8:10PM
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Woo. First success (for me). 1.17a logs me in - most of the time. Exhibits some interesting behaviour though. Am looking forward to a non-beta version

Still, well done R-Comp.

MENTAT on 26/10/03 11:15AM
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