- For the fictional alien race in Babylon 5, see Gaim (Babylon 5).
Gaim is a multi-platform instant messaging client program that supports many commonly used instant messaging systems including:
Previously referred to as "GAIM" (all capitals) or "gAIM" (first letter not capitalized), it is now better known as either "Gaim" or "gaim". Its name is not to be considered an acronym to clarify that it does not have any affiliation with AOL. The term "instant messenger" and the acronym "AIM" are Service Marks of AOL Time Warner, so Gaim is not allowed to use them. Gaim is Free Software available under the GNU GPL. The current version is Gaim 1.1.2, released January 21th, 2005.
Originally written by Mark Spencer for Unix-like operating systems, it now runs on a variety of platforms, including Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, SkyOS and Trolltech's PDA system, Qtopia.
Recently, the Gaim developers have started to separate the core code—which handles things such as network connections and messaging—from the GUI code, which controls how these actions are presented to the user. After the code split is complete, it will be possible to write client programs using a developer's GUI library of choice. The core library produced by the split will be called libgaim; an in-development but stable version of this library is already in use in the Adium client.
PhoneGaim is software based on Gaim (and thus also available under the GPL) that uses the SIP protocol to be able to have voice communication over the internet via VoIP.
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