Shoutbox

If they lose money because it's free for us and expensive, why did M$ create it in the first way ? I buy a newspaper to read it, what was M$ obtaining when creating it ? They did it to kill the others, then, when no one uses the others, I'll charge them (soon to come in you Windows desktop). That's no "poor me, I'm losing money". If you're losing money, close it. No one pushes you to buy Windows (oh, well, only the fact that xx% of programs need Windows to run, and the "couple" of bucks M$ is putting inside some people's wallets so they decide not to use Linux or whatever), but no one pushes you to buy Trillian Pro either. Use Trillian Lite. And if Trillian Lite is a shit, use another!

And there's no official MSN for Linux, so you're forced to use aMSN, LICQ or whatever 3rd party to connect, and they're free, and they're giving a service M$ doesn't want to give. They're the ones giving newspapers to people in villages where The Disablez Times doesn't want to sell. They are free, they're wasting their time making a program, and they produce the same load Messenger would, so what's the difference between using MSN or aMSN? I am using the same server, I'm paying nobody, and the only difference is in the window that I have in my desktop.  But I'm sure you all can see why M$ does want to reduce or eliminate use of other clients.

And when Messenger 6 came, and Patchou said "I won't be able to adapt Plus!" I didn't hear a single word of praise to MS... and it was still MS's MSN, and they still could do whatever they wanted with it.
Plus! is an addon to MSN, Plus! doesn't work w/o MSN, so in fact you're also using something from them. And now you're winning some money with it...  (Trillian), you can say, well, you can either not install the sponsor so I don't earn a buck (Trillian Lite),  or you can use another addon...  (And I know Plus! builds on top and Trillian replaces it, but in fact they're building on the same thing, but at different levels, both of which are higher than the server one)

To resume, it's theirs, they can do whatever they want, but I won't praise a sheep skin because I now there's still a wolf beneath it.