BitlBee

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BitlBee

BitlBee

Screenshot of Irssi IRC client connected to a Bitlbee server to communicate via Windows Live
Developer:	BitlBee team, with Wilmer van der Gaast as Lead Developer
Initial release:	2002-08-09
Stable release	Template:LSR
Genre:	Instant messaging client
License:	GNU General Public License
Website:	[[Website::www.bitlbee.org]]

BitlBee is an IRC instant messaging gateway licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It communicates with the end-user via the IRC protocol whilst interacting with popular chat networks such as AIM and ICQ (both via OSCAR), Windows Live, Yahoo! and Jabber. The users' buddies appear as normal IRC users in a channel and conversations use the private message facility of IRC.

Although it is possible to run BitlBee on your own computer, there are many servers available for public use. [1]

BitlBee runs on many operating systems including Linux, Unix, BSD, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and AmigaOS.

[edit] History

While the idea for BitlBee was forged at the 24th of June, in 2002 by Wilmer van der Gaast, it remains unknown when the first lines of code were written.

In early stages of development, BitlBee was more or less a semi-fork of Pidgin (known as Gaim at that time), only for IRC clients. As of lately, only the API remains similar to that of Pidgin.