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  Steve Kostecke, 17 Dec 2002 @ 3:12pm

  
  

  Prior Art?

  Zephyr (from MIT's Project Athena) provides networked instant messaging and a "buddy list". The man pages show copyright dates of 1987,1988,1989
  
  From the zephyr(1) man page:
  
  Zephyr is a notice transport and delivery system developed at MIT which runs under 4.3BSD Unix.
  
  A Notice Transport and Delivery system is a method of getting small quantities of time sensitive information effi­ciently from one client (or server) on a network to another.
  
  Zephyrd(8) servers run on designated server machines. These servers maintain a database of subscriptions and locations for every user using Zephyr.
  
  Each client machine on the network runs a zhm(8) HostManager client program which is the link between the Zephyr servers and the users.
  
  Each user on the network usually runs a WindowGram client program automatically upon login. Zwgc(1) displays notices to the user, and handles user responses. Only notices to which the user has subscribed will be sent to the WindowGram client.
  
  From the znol(1) man page:
  
  Znol provides a way for you to be notified when "interest­ing" people log in or out. It uses the Zephyr(1) Notifi­cation Service, which causes a message to appear on your screen for every person specified in a namelist (which defaults to $HOME/.anyone).
  
  

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• 

  Chris, 17 Dec 2002 @ 7:01pm

  
  

  Prior art - IRC?

  How long has IRC been around? How about talk?
  
  Both of those have been around for at least 20 years, talk has been around for at least as long as Unix...
  
  Chris

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• 

  Stop AOL, 18 Dec 2002 @ 2:33pm

  
  

  Help Get AOL's Patent Invalidated

  We all know that IRC was around way before ICQ! Help do your part in trying to invalidate AOL's patent on instant messaging!

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