aMSN[1] was a free Windows Live Messenger clone. aMSN attempted to emulate the look and feel of Windows Live Messenger, and supported many of its features. It had been downloaded approximately 40 million times as of January 2011, making it the 21st most downloaded project on SourceForge.[2]
aMSN was based on a previous application named Compu's Messenger (ccmsn), released on September 21, 2001, by Dave Mifsud. Features in this application were quite limited and development seemed to be stopped. Alvaro Iradier made a fork of the development with his own version, aMSN (Alvaro's Messenger). At the time Didimo E. Grimaldo was also working on his own branch of ccMSN until both Alvaro and Didimo heard of each other in a development forum and decided to merge their improvements into one version. The first version of aMSN was released on May 22, 2002, on SourceForge.
After several successful releases of their join effort, Didimo E. Grimaldo decided to take leave as a developer due to other pressing responsibilities and lack of time. ccMSN/aMSN was in fact the last of several free and open source projects in which Didimo worked.
More developers joined the project, like Philippe G. Khalaf and later Youness Alaoui. In 2012, the project kept going thanks to the effort and help of an increasing number of developers, translators, and designers.
aMSN was well known for quickly implementing most of the official client's features, often being the only third-party client that supported them. For example, it was the only client that supported video conferencing on Mac.[5] It has been reviewed by many software-specialized websites.[6][7] Its releases have appeared on several well-known blogs,[8][9][10][11] its developers have been interviewed,[12][13] and it has even appeared on a few TV series internationally.[14][15]
Removal of video call and webcam functionality
With the release of Windows Live Messenger 2009, Microsoft made changes to the protocol used by Windows Live Messenger. These changes included the use of P2P-SIP instead of using an external server. As a result of this, the video call function to aMSN was made unusable and was removed from versions 0.98.3 and 0.98.4 of aMSN.[16]
In late 2010, Microsoft released Windows Live Messenger 2011, which removed one-way webcam functionality, meaning that aMSN was left with no practical webcam function.[17]
Features
Features present in the Microsoft client
Support for the MSN Protocol 15 (although it also allows use of both old and new protocols)[18]
Personal messages;
"What I'm listening to" personal messages (from a third-party plugin; includes support for music programs like Amarok or XMMS in Linux);
Contact list and display name retrieval from Microsoft servers;
Offline messaging (fully functional in development release);
Logging in under any status;
File transfers, sending and receiving;
Replication of Windows Live Messenger's look and feel;
Nudges (included as a plugin where you may adjust various options);
Games that can be played between two aMSN clients (from a plugin);
Plugins offer various other features as well;
Shows when contacts don't have you on their list, as well as contacts that have you on their list but are not in yours;
This was no longer possible since Microsoft fixed this bug in its protocol. Note that newly added contacts will show up as if they don't have you in their list, but older contacts will show up as they have you in their list.
Webcam sessions recording;
Encrypted chats (from the third-party Kryptonite plugin);
Automatic storing of contacts' display pictures;
A chat window pops up when the other person opens a window with you, even if they haven't typed anything yet;
A message in the chat window informs you when the person closes their chat window.
^fredag 10. februar 2006 kl. 14:05 Av Martin Sivertsen. "Interview by ITAvisen". Itavisen.no. Archived from the original on October 3, 2011. Retrieved October 14, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
