Fanatic Live

At the start of January, Todd Biggs responded to a question at the MSDN forums about third party clients which connect to the .NET Messenger Service. He explains that there is only one client which is licensed to connect to the network, the Reuters Messaging client. Additionally, there are various ISV programs and services, ie. bots.

Although this really just tells us about the licensing information we already know, many people ask about it and here is the answer again. My question is, if you use or create and unlicensed client, what’s going to happen? Nothing has happened in the 2+ years since the licensing was introduced.

The terms of service states the following under section 3:

You may only use Microsoft software or authorized third-party software to sign into and use the Service. You can find a list of authorized third-party software at http://messenger.msn.com/Help/Authorized.aspx.

And under section 13:

Unless you, or a third party on your behalf, have a separate written contract with Microsoft that modifies this contract, then we may terminate or suspend your Service at any time.

My interpretation of this is that if you use a third party client, Microsoft reserve the right to block you from connecting to the service, which I have never heard of happening.