Overdose (chat client)

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Overdose
Developer: Segin
Latest release: 0.3 / September 11, 2006
OS: Cross-platform
Use: chat client
Website: Overdose

Overdose is a Yahoo! Chat client written in C, and using ncurses for display. It is multithreaded using POSIX Threads and supports several features despite its early stage of development, those being shellexec (the ability to run shell commands and print the output to the chat room), and timestamps.

Overdose works on the following platforms:

However, Overdose does not work at this time because Yahoo! discontinued the YCHT protocol.

Contents

[edit] Gyach and Overdose

There is a rumor started by Gentoo developer Kathryn Kulick that Overdose contains stolen Gyach code. However, these claims are unsubstantiated, as Overdose and Gyach are complete opposites, Gyach uses GTK+2 for an interface, Overdose uses ncurses and a compatible terminal; Gyach uses YMSG for Yahoo! interaction, whereas Overdose uses the now defunct YCHT protocol. It should also be noted that both programs are released under the GNU GPL.

[edit] Early development history

Overdose was originally written in cooperation by the current maintainer, and Mattis Michel, a 16-year old FreeBSD user from Belgium, whose nickname, both on the Internet and in the real world, is Maties. Overdose was originally called "ychtclient", and was developed in a manner that made it only run and compile correctly on FreeBSD. The current maintainer cleaned up the code, made it work on Linux, and sent the changes back to Mattis.

Around December 10, 2005, in an online conversation, the name "Overdose" was finally decided upon, based on events that had happened to the developers several nights prior.

A snapshot of the Overdose code from sometime in November 2005 is available, but you must request it by email. The email address for all requests is segin2005@gmail.com

[edit] Foreign code in Overdose

Overdose uses code from the following sources:

  • A strsep function submitted as a patch for glib-1.3 that wasn't accepted; The archived mailing list post with the patch can be found here
  • Some code from YMSK, another Yahoo! Chat client.
  • memtok.c and the accomanying header from libyahoo
  • The entire libyahoo2 library, although none of it is actually used.
  • a portable snprintf library available under both the GPL and the Frontier Artistic License, and can be downloaded here
  • Some builtin YMSG code derived from a Visual Basic YMSG11 client; the source for this client is included in the Overdose source for reference purposes ONLY, and is not used.
  • YMSG code from Gaim, which isn't used directly.

[edit] External links

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