Miranda IM is a free software – a program with open source and it is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Miranda IM client provides the environment for instant messaging networks, design and functionality which can be changed and expanded with additional plug-ins.

It is distributed in two versions – Unicode (under OS family of Windows NT – NT, XP and later) and ANSI (under OS family of Windows 9x).

Beginning

Miranda was created by Roland Rabien on February 2, 2000. At that time it was a minimalist clone of ICQ, and officially it was called Miranda ICQ.

The first version 0.0.1 was released on February 6, 2000. The program used LibICQ, had no support for message history, databases, plugins, and had a size less than 100 KB.

The main feature of version 0.0.4 was bot MegaHAL, which enabled automatic chat between Miranda and other users. With version 0.0.6 the support for plugins appeared, and became the first plugin in the history of Logger.

Version 0.9.x

It is currently under development, from 2010 available in version 0.9.0 Alpha 5. A simplified mode settings (plug Modern Options) is introduced, enabled by default, to the plug-in of tabsrmm message windows the support capabilities of the new Windows 7 Taskbar are added. 64-bit version is being also developed, but because of the peculiarities of architecture, it supports only 64-bit plug-ins.