AOL is offering a developer kit for writing software that interoperates with AIM's (AOL Instant Messenger) 60 million-strong userbase. The Open AIM kit can also be used to write AIM plugins. The kit is free, when used with AIM username/login namespaces, and AOL will also license custom namespaces, it says.

“The Open AIM program gives smaller companies, Web communities, and developers access to the code base of AIM Triton, AOL's next-generation IM client, and the ability to create their own versions of the AIM service,” writes Ryan Naraine at eWEEK.

The move represents a change of strategy for AOL, which has long guarded access to its chat network, according to Naraine. Naraine says the move was inspired by the emergence of “mashups,” or web applications that draw information from several sources. The move comes as Yahoo, IBM, Microsoft, and others are promoting competing chat and collaboration products for the enterprise market, and as VoIP operators such as Skype offer open chat networks.

The Open AIM kit is free for commercial applications, with some restrictions. Applications designed for mobile device deployments require licensing, as do those that use wireless telecommunications networking. Additionally, custom client usage appears to be limited to 250,000 client invocations per day, or two million per month, unless otherwise licensed. Additional details can be found in an FAQ, here.

The eWEEK story can be found here. Also of possible interest is an earlier eWEEK story about AOL's enterprise chat software partnership with phone- and video-conferencing specialist WebEx.

The Open AIM SDK is available here.

 
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