Lily (CMC)

lily is a CMC program. It was developed by students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.

Like other CMC's (such as AIM or IRC), lily allows users to read and reply to messages in a text-based format. A lily server is composed of one or more "discussions". Each discussion has a name and overall topic, and is owned by exactly one user. A user may join as many discussions as he/she pleases.

Messages may be sent to a discussion (known as 'public' sends), to another user (known as 'private' sends), or to a combination of more than one users and/or discussions. Messages sent to a discussion will be seen by all users who have joined that discussion. Messages sent to users will be seen only by those users.

lily stores buffers of messages both for discussions and for each individual user. This enables users to 'review' what was sent to them and to their favorite discussions while they were disconnected from lily (or otherwise not paying attention).

The current incarnation of lily is the result of several modifications to existing CMCs at RPI. Previous names include 'Connect' and 'Clover'.

Several clients exist to connect to a lily server. The two most common clients are clily and tigerlily. Other clients include WinLily, and StupidLily. Each client has its own features and benefits.

lily is used both for entertainment (such as the lily server at RPI), and in the workplace. Some companies have decided to install a lily server to aid in workplace communication.

External links

* [http://lilycore.sourceforge.net/ Lily Sourceforge site]
* [http://www.freegroups.org/lily-twiki/bin/view/Lily/WebHome wiki]