From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9
From: "Russ Cox" <rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com>
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Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 13:30:03 -0500
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	is there some spec. for icq (the protocol)?  i've got some old public source code
	but it looks as though they reverse engineered it, and if i were to implement it
	(not that i am) i'd prefer to do it from a spec, and only then look at source
	to see all the places that the spec is wrong or misleading or extended, as
	befits any Internet protocol.
	
There are only reverse engineered specs.
I wrote a simple client long ago that I could
dig up.

The big problem with all the public source 
code is that it's so ridiculously big.  Hundreds
of lines to deal with byte order issues.

Mirabilis seems to have stopped caring about
the clones, though.  They were sending nasty
letters to others three years ago when I wrote
my clone.  Perhaps it has something to do with 
the fact that AIM has released their spec.

Russ