BitlBee

Screenshot of Irssi IRC client connected to a Bitlbee server to communicate via Windows Live
Developer(s)	BitlBee team, with Wilmer van der Gaast as Lead Developer
Initial release	9 August 2002
Stable release	1.2.4  (2009-10-17; 2 months ago) [+/−]
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Instant messaging client
License	GNU General Public License
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), .NET Messenger Service, Yahoo! and XMPP. 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 with an IRC frontend.

[edit] See also

Free software portal

[edit] References

• Paul Mutton, IRC hacks, O'Reilly Media, 2004, ISBN 059600687X, pp. 374-383

[edit] External links

• BitlBee homepage
• A guide to using BitlBee
• Bitlbee Quickstart Guide