FreeSoftwareDL

Formerly known as Gaim, the Pidgin chat Client is one of the most popular piences of opensoource software around. It fully supports a plethora of chat networks including Yahoo, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Gadu Gadu, IRC and more. Having all your friends in one place has never been easier. Pidgin supports all your standard chat features like file transfers, away messages, buddy icons and of course smilies.

Pidgin also has a large list of plugins that let you do everything from adding other messenging services like Facebook or Twitter to encrypting your chat logs to keep away prying eyes.

Pidgin is free and is open source and licensed under the GNU General Public License. This means you can get Pidgin’s underlying code and modify it to suit your needs, as long as you publish the changes you make for everyone to benefit from as well.

The following protocols are officially supported by libpurple 2.5.5, without any extensions or plugins:

• Bonjour (Apple’s implementation of Zeroconf)
• Gadu-Gadu
• Internet Relay Chat
• Lotus Sametime
• MySpaceIM
• .NET Messenger Service (commonly known as MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger) (no multimedia support)
• Novell GroupWise
• OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac)
• QQ
• SIMPLE
• SILC
• XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk)
• Yahoo! (only basic chat and file transfers)
• Zephyr

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