It would be great if more clients implimented a chat compatible with what Limewire has.

Bearshare just recently added something called Secure Channels. If hosts are being securely verified, then that could also be used to verify who you are chatting with...hence to have identity verification.

This would releive us all of AOL's monopoly of the Instant Messaging Market.

Chat with Shareaza is compatible with LimeWire.

Plus you can use IRC.

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AOL's monopoly only works for those who are AOL users, the rest of us know what a real ISP is and how to use real chat systems.

Argh I don't see why we need another IM network. We already have AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, Jabber, and god knows that else. Add Gnutella to that list? No thanks.

That is like saying we don't need Gnutella because we already have FTP.

Okay...so stop being so secretive and say what the "real chat system" is.

That is awesome. Now if Gnucleus, Bearshare, and GTK-Gnutella would adopt it too.

Now that is completely absurd. FTP is merely a transfer protocol. It is not a peer to peer network. On the other hand, an IM network using dedicated clients and an IM network using clients that are built into Gnutella clients are the same. Comparing FTP-Gnutella and TraditionalIM-GnutellaIM is comparing two completely different things.

Gnutella serves a specific purpose, sharing files between peers. If you want Gnutella to become a full-fledged IM network, it is reinventing the wheel, and wasting the time of Gnutella developers. Furthermore, you would never catch up with the developers who are working on a dedicated IM network only.

Again, that is absurd. There is no monopoly. You are free to use MSN, or Yahoo!, or Jabber. The only difference is the number of users on the network. If Gnutella becomes an IM network as well, you'd just have yet another network that is not interoperable with the others. Or are you asking Gnutella developers to make it so the Gnutella IM network is also interoperable with MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, etc.?

If you are frustrated that so many people use AOL's network and you dislike their software, try Trillian or GAIM or other interoperable clients out there.

Actually, I had a discussion with a few others regarding user verification for chat purposes. It can work, but since specs exist on "quick and dirty" writings only right now, it'll be a while before this can be achieved. In the meantime, one could indeed use LimeWire's method instead, until a better mechanism is being used.

Gnutella is for filesharing...

AOL does not have a monopoly because if they did nobody would use any other kind of chatting systems and a lot of my friends use other chatting systems than AOL.