Program/Application Discussion

Open OSCAR Server

If you have a VPS or your own server at home and miss AIM or ICQ, you can now host your own OSCAR server using Open OSCAR Server (previously Retro AIM Server) and relive those old AIM and ICQ clients without depending from those closed and centralized services like NINA.

GitHub GitHub - mk6i/open-oscar-server: Self-hostable instant messaging server compatible with classic AIM and ICQ clients written in golang. (Independently developed, not affiliated with or endors... Self-hostable instant messaging server compatible with classic AIM and ICQ clients written in golang. (Independently developed, not affiliated with or endorsed by AOL) - mk6i/open-oscar-server github.com

Oh man AIM was another messenger app I used a little bit back in the day. My wife and I would use both Yahoo Messenger and AIM to communicate since I didn't have a phone when we first started dating way back in 2008 haha. I currently don't have a VPS or a home server so I wouldn't be able to host it, maybe if I can get my old gaming rig turned into a server I might mess around with this! I never used ICQ though.

On May 25, 2026, Ravenfreak said:

My wife and I would use both Yahoo Messenger and AIM to communicate since I didn't have a phone when we first started dating way back in 2008 haha.

I honestly miss the days when some IM apps used to have features like these to "decentralized" communication just like email and also to avoid changing between clients and accounts. Nowadays everything is closed to one chat (web)app.

Well, seems like someone made a video about this

- YouTube YouTube

On Jul 13, 2026, Alien Hominid said:

Well, seems like someone made a video about this

I haven't watched this yet but her video did pop up on my Youtube for you page. I was thinking of this thread when I seen this while scrolling youtube the other day, might be worth it mentioning the forum in her comments section but I don't want to come off as sharing spam lol.

Well, I should have mentioned this before, but since October 2025 I was thinking about making my own OSCAR server as I really love classic AIM (mostly because of how simple it was on design) and for people using retro computers out there, but because there isn't a way to people to signup except the server owner using API commands through cURL (just as how mentioned in that video), I would have had to create a web frontend for the API for managing accounts, and honestly I never felt like doing it and I ended up scrapping that idea.
I nowadays host my own XMPP server for myself, I wonder if there's a way to implement a "bridge" between OSCAR and XMPP.