OSCAR - technical definition

(Open System for CommunicAtion in Realtime) AOL's internal project name for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). The core functions of OSCAR, known as the Basic OSCAR Services (BOS), include Login/Logoff, Locate (find out about other AIM users), Instant Message (send message) and Buddy List management. In 1998, AOL introduced TOC, a subset of OSCAR released under the GNU license, which has been used to write AIM clients for Linux and other operating systems. See FLAP.