I have similar problems with GnomeICU. The problem is that AOL (ICQ's
owners) like to keep their protocols private and closed-source. That
means that any other project to create an ICQ client must
reverse-engineer the protocol -- a very difficult and painstaking
task. I know GnomeICU is fully compatible with all ICQ versions up to
2000a. Of course, by the time the protocols for this were worked out
by the developers and the new version released, AOL had released a new
version of their official ICQ client, 2000b. This is a little game AOL
likes to play to annoy other ICQ client developers, forever keeping
them on the back foot. I find that when I talk to users of 2000b, I
can't have a real-time chat, and I have to send all messages through
the server -- in other words I can't establish a direct connection,
just like your problem.
I have tried fiddling with firewall settings; this is not the problem.
The problem lies with AOL and their stranglehold on the world instant
messaging market.
On Sun, 17 Jun 2001 05:57, Magnus Stenemo wrote:
> Hello!
>
> When anybody tries to watch my away (and NA) msg the system replies
> "can't establish a direct connection to user". All of my friends got
> the same reply so it has to be something to do with my computer.
> Can it have something to do with the tinyfirewall that is up and
> running? How do I turn it off??
>
> running LM 8.0 licq 1.0.3/SSL
>
> Please help!
>
> //Magnus
--
Sridhar Dhanapalan.
"There are two major products that come from Berkeley:
LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
-- Jeremy S. Anderson
