> >I believe that ICQ and mIRC are out for the same reasons (they don't
> >sell their server packages do they?)
I believe AOL just released the ICQ spec officially. Give it a few weeks,
and an good free ICQ server will exist, if one doesn't already.(grin) . A
quick Freshmeat search turned out Iserverd which claims to be a ICQ server,
and quite developed already.
IRC is (and has been) open sourced and GPLed for quite a LONG time... but
it's not quite an IM tool.
I'd go with the ICQ over the IRC one... IRC can do more in the long run, but
it's not nearly as friendly or as easy, and so many ICQ addons exist that
you can do all sorts of cool stuff (ICQ-> email, web to ICQ, etc etc etc...)
