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The company I worked for was starting to look for a replacement for Lynx, and I was in the position to choose OpenFire. I wanted to find a host, someone that would offer configuration services and a host for it. I reached out to the various listed supporting companies at the time and got nowhere. I would have been happy to pay someone for a dozen hours worth of configuration support. Instead I ended up setting it up and working through all the issues myself, but that was my least preferred option. There would have potential for ongoing reconfiguration assistance. Eventually we switched back to Office 365's (renamed) Lynx system. That's thousands of dollars I would have been happy to redirect to an open source support company if I'd been able to find one.

If there's a lesson to be learned there, it's that there is money to be had if you can find the demand.

What software you develop will determine what service you can offer for it. What I want to see more of is:

• * Open source software for free
• * Configuration support for a fee
• * A hosted server with support as a service.

As far as a good reference pair for server and client, have you looked at Openfire and Spark?

https://www.igniterealtime.org...

Openfire is a fantastic open source XMPP server, so virtually every third-party messaging client (like Pidgin) can connect to it. It's also easy to set it up to federate server-to-server communications, so your friends can run their own servers if they really want to, although if this is a fairly small group of people using it, you're really better off just setting up a single server for everybody.

I'm a fan of Openfire. Nice admin interface, easy to install, easy to hack (it's just Java, and it's a relatively sane specimen from that ecosystem).

It's my impression that ejabberd is considered the best XMPP server, but it's written in Erlang so your C-family skills won't get you far in hacking it, it's less friendly to administrate (unless your config is extremely boring), and, as with so many Erlang projects, the documentation is mediocre and assumes you know Erlang—especially Mnesia, which Erlang developers seem to love more than anything else in the entire world, to the point that they can't help directly exposing mere sysadmins to its greatness.

Both appear to support voice chat, though I've never tried to use it.

You can set up your own IM system.

The openfire/spark setup works pretty good.

http://www.igniterealtime.org/index.jsp

It is entirely possible to deploy internal IM services, with free software like openfire, which uses the same protocol as google talk and facebook, without the need to expose internal data and keeping a central log of every conversation. For the twitter necessities there is Status.Net, which powers open-source twitter clone identi.ca, that can be installed internally and seems to be API compatible with twitter clients.
I am not advocating substitution of email messages, but sometimes IM can be very useful on a corporation, taking the right steps to keep security and accountability. It is really very useful to help desk staff, for example.

The big problem is that they're reinventing the wheel several times along the way. OneSocialWeb had a MUCH better idea. They simply boot strapped their API for sharing off the pre-existing XMPP/Jabber standard, and it works really well. They wrote a plugin for the Openfire XMPP server, leveraging their pre-existing presence, messaging, security, login, and user management structure. Hell, it even pulls my XMPP groups and uses them as groups for setting permissions on posts. If they could get the attention Diaspora is getting, I think the progress to a usable alternative could be far quicker.

The fact is, Diaspora's young team is showing just how young they are. Sure, they have energy, but they also have a case of NIH and needing to code everything from the ground up to feel good about it, instead of leveraging somebody else's having already solved part of your problem so that you can get on to solving the REAL issue. They're blocking IE, for fuck's sake. That's stupid. In order for this project to be useful, it has to INCLUDE as many people as possible, not EXCLUDE for arbitrary nerd-religion wars.

The only reason they got as much attention and funding as they did was the fortuitous timing as Facebook ignited the internet's collective nerd rage and they announced their project, because frankly they're Doing It Wrong(tm) pretty much every step of the way since then.

Set up your own XMPP Server and give your friends a login. Tell them they can use a program like Pidgin to login, and then tell them they can also use Pidgin to be signed into Facebook Chat at the same time. If you're lucky? They might bite as long as you're on the hook to show them how to set up Facebook Chat on it too.

Re: IM

Try the Openfire Jabber/XMPP server. Have your own server for the office, and if your company has > 100 employees, create groups of each department and auto-share the group roster to the group. So when people join/leave the company, the roster updates for everyone. Jabber is awesome.

Don't be discouraged by the people that learn by example. They just have a different way learning. Its no better or worse.

I think the OP is coding. The quizzes and assignments he speaks of include coding. Some of it more difficult than what a career programmer does on a daily basis.

There's two paths... 1. Learn more, or 2. Apply what you've learned.

If you decide to learn more (we're alway learning, right?), Servlets, Applets, MIDP are great paths to follow. They'll challenge you even more, and make you more hire-able than the millions of students out there that know classes, interfaces, data types and gui libraries.

Learning anything Thread related is great too. The concurrency packages introduced in more recent versions (Since 5.0 I believe) are great for writing server applications. Research Openfire as an excellent server project example that will win resume points.

To apply what you've learned (if you have the time, and it sounds you do), start a small project that solves a particular technology issue and make the world just a little bit better. It will all mesh together for your career.

-Tres

Who the hell is Digsby and why should I care, when there's other perfectly free alternatives available that don't bundle crapware with them.

http://www.igniterealtime.org/issues/browse/JM-1212

This bit me last year, and it's apparently still not fixed. :(

openfire whiteboard - http://www.version2software.com/blog/2007/03/whiteboard-sparkplug-released.html openfire more robust collaboration - maybe this http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/docs/DOC-1518 we use openfire+spark with SSO

It's very possible that I was mistaken and that SSO for Spark simply doesn't work with Active Directory. But I had done a bunch of reading and I was under the impression that not only was it possible but that a lot of people had it set up that way.

There are many threads like this one:
http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/thread/26839

Network Solutions started with Pidgin for internal chat and a chatroom, then moved to Spark.

Meets all your requirements: does not support outside protocols such as AIM, MSN, Yahoo, runs on XP, scalable and free.

Best thing about it was that it saved the chatroom conversation for the last few hours, so you could login and see what was discussed earlier that day.

http://www.igniterealtime.org/index.jsp We've had good luck with this combo.

Well, in my experience I have used Openfire and Jabber (via ebox). Both are easy to install and use. Ebox is a bit harder, but if you don't already have a server with SSO, it is the best option in my opinion. I have scaled both at companies with ~200 employees.

Word of warning though, I only use communications internally, have not tried to connect either solution via Internet (only as corporate intranet), though it is possible.

For the client, I find Pandion works best on XP clients, if you do not need other protocols as MSN, Yahoo, etc.

http://www.igniterealtime.org/ It's an excellent combo, and if you don't want it to connect with Yahoo and all, just don't turn the feature on for the server. We've had it up and running for about 3 years, and it's been flawless.

Openfire and the server, Spark is the client. http://igniterealtime.org./ We use it in healthcare where I work and it's pretty solid. Archiving is an optional module and works well.

I double and triple recommend Openfire. http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp/

We have been running this with their Spark client http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/spark/index.jsp/ for roughly 300 employees and this thing is great.

- Free
- Supports logging
- Supports keyword blocking (important in a medical environment)
- Has a web-based client, too
- LDAP (Active Directory) integration supported

You'd be hard-pressed to find another IM server that is as polished as Openfire, while still being free.

I double and triple recommend Openfire. http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp/

We have been running this with their Spark client http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/spark/index.jsp/ for roughly 300 employees and this thing is great.

- Free
- Supports logging
- Supports keyword blocking (important in a medical environment)
- Has a web-based client, too
- LDAP (Active Directory) integration supported

You'd be hard-pressed to find another IM server that is as polished as Openfire, while still being free.

I agree, Openfire Server with Spark as the IM client will satisfy your requirements. It is a solid, extensible instant messaging server that should meet all your requirements.

What is nice about Openfire is that it allows you to centralize the management and security a lot, which gives you a lot of control in information-sensitive situations like this. It has integration with an existing LDAP/AD server if you want to keep your authentication policy centralized on your LDAP server if you have one. Likewise, you can force all users to use SSL for secure messaging if you want.

Likewise, I was working with the open source version over the last couple weeks (I setup a test environment for our company), and based on the menu options it appears that message auditing also is included (I didn't try it), so you can log all your conversations as you would like. I knew they had this feature before in their paid version, but it looks like they made it available in their open source version.

Finally, if you ever grow and need support, you can get it from their list of service providers. And it's free :-). It has easy installs for both Windows and Linux - definitely give it a try.
Good luck!

Openfire Server
Spark XMPP Client

I agree, Openfire Server with Spark as the IM client will satisfy your requirements. It is a solid, extensible instant messaging server that should meet all your requirements.

What is nice about Openfire is that it allows you to centralize the management and security a lot, which gives you a lot of control in information-sensitive situations like this. It has integration with an existing LDAP/AD server if you want to keep your authentication policy centralized on your LDAP server if you have one. Likewise, you can force all users to use SSL for secure messaging if you want.

Likewise, I was working with the open source version over the last couple weeks (I setup a test environment for our company), and based on the menu options it appears that message auditing also is included (I didn't try it), so you can log all your conversations as you would like. I knew they had this feature before in their paid version, but it looks like they made it available in their open source version.

Finally, if you ever grow and need support, you can get it from their list of service providers. And it's free :-). It has easy installs for both Windows and Linux - definitely give it a try.
Good luck!

Openfire Server
Spark XMPP Client

OpenFire is the tool we used at the last shop I worked at - for exactly this. (it's a java-based server and will run on many server types including but hardly restricted to most Linux distros and Windows) They've got some great commercial tools as well.

for something requiring more technical workings of the software - jabber2 and ejabberd both are superior - but take more configuration.

For clients - there's the Spark client also from IGN software - which works well enough. otherwise a wide variety of opensource clients support Jabber/XMPP. You can firewall out the ports externally to lock people into being able to only sign into the local net as well, easily enough.

note: I currently do not work for anyone so I do not speak for any agency.

Rumor has it that openfire server with spark is pretty fancy.

http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/index.jsp

OpenFire, as many others have noted, is an open source jabber server, that's highly extensible, and already has support for the logging you require (via the monitoring plugin).

The same group also has a web based client, SparkWeb, that you can lock down to your OpenFire installation. You can also lock down OpenFire, so that it only supports your official client. One of the nice things about a web client is you don't have to deploy to 100 desktops. You just send out a link. :)

OpenFire, as many others have noted, is an open source jabber server, that's highly extensible, and already has support for the logging you require (via the monitoring plugin).

The same group also has a web based client, SparkWeb, that you can lock down to your OpenFire installation. You can also lock down OpenFire, so that it only supports your official client. One of the nice things about a web client is you don't have to deploy to 100 desktops. You just send out a link. :)

OpenFire, as many others have noted, is an open source jabber server, that's highly extensible, and already has support for the logging you require (via the monitoring plugin).

The same group also has a web based client, SparkWeb, that you can lock down to your OpenFire installation. You can also lock down OpenFire, so that it only supports your official client. One of the nice things about a web client is you don't have to deploy to 100 desktops. You just send out a link. :)

At a company I left recently I installed Openfire and our supported IM client was their spark client (however despite my ex-bosses rants a lot of clients ended up being used by employee's) Spark works really well. Openfire is rock solid. It runs on Linux or Windows (better on Linux less server load). Without a hitch. Live upgrades work, and if you use mysql as the DB backend you can have auto failover. SSL 3 and TLS are supported as well.

It has an intuitive/simple web interface for administration, and meets your logging needs and more. It can also support many gateways such as AIM, MSN, GADU-GADU, Yahoo! etc - But you don't have to enable them if you don't want them. I use this with the PSI IM client http://psi-im.org/ - A cross-platform Jabber IM client for MAC OSX, Linux and Windows. Check it out at: http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp

I would recommend Openfire. It is a Jabber / XMMP implementation from Jive Software, and is open source (GPL).

See http://www.igniterealtime.org/

I can say from experience that it is fairly easy to administer, is multi-platform, and scales nicely. It has a rather nice size of plugins and should meet compliance standards.

I used a Program called openfire/spark. It's client/server based and completely Free. It's OSS and very powerful. It uses the jabber protocol and it worked well for our company of over 200+ people. http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/spark/index.jsp

http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp

Works very well. Meets all your reqirements. Client supports Mac, Win and Linux but is a resource hog. It's jabber though so you can use many clients.

I second OpenFire. We have been (mostly) happily using it for a couple of years now. Trivially easy to setup, can back onto all the major DBs (or has one builtin) and has reasonable - if a bit clumsy and limited - capabilities to integrate with Active Directory.

Open Fire is a wonderful Open Source server for jabber. I used it in a similar situation a few years back. There are many jabber clients- I'm sure you can find one that meets your needs.

http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp

Works very well. Meets all your reqirements. Client supports Mac, Win and Linux but is a resource hog. It's jabber though so you can use many clients.

# emerge --search openfire
Searching...
[ Results for search key : openfire ]
[ Applications found : 1 ]

* net-im/openfire
            Latest version available: 3.6.0
            Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
            Size of files: 49,922 kB
            Homepage: http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/
            Description: Openfire (formerly wildfire) real time collaboration (RTC) server
            License: GPL-2

Damn, that's HUGE for a source package. jabberd isn't even an eightyeth of that size.
But never mind, if it's good, perhaps it's still worth a try.

# emerge --pretend openfire

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild N ] dev-java/java-config-wrapper-0.15
[ebuild N ] dev-python/pyxml-0.8.4-r1 USE="-doc -examples"
[ebuild N ] dev-java/java-config-2.1.6
[ebuild N ] dev-java/javatoolkit-0.3.0-r2
[ebuild N ] dev-java/java-config-1.3.7
[ebuild N ] dev-java/sun-jdk-1.6.0.07 USE="X -alsa -doc -examples -jce -nsplugin -odbc"
[ebuild N ] virtual/jdk-1.6.0
[ebuild N ] dev-java/ant-core-1.7.0-r1 USE="-doc -source"
[ebuild N ] virtual/jre-1.6.0
[ebuild N ] dev-java/xml-commons-external-1.3.04 USE="-doc -source"
[ebuild N ] dev-java/bcel-5.2 USE="-doc -source"
[ebuild N ] dev-java/xml-commons-resolver-1.2 USE="-doc -source"
[ebuild N ] dev-java/xjavac-20041208-r5
[ebuild N ] dev-java/xalan-serializer-2.7.1 USE="-doc -source"
[ebuild N ] dev-java/xerces-2.9.1 USE="-doc -examples -source"
[ebuild N ] dev-java/ant-contrib-1.0_beta2-r2 USE="-doc -source"
[ebuild N ] net-im/openfire-3.6.0 USE="-doc"

Um, thanks, but no thanks. For something as simple as an XMPP server, this is way overkill, and too many things that can break and/or need extra support and/or require new hardware. If you already run a java shop, sure, but if you don't, my recommendation is to stay clear, even if it promises to wash your socks and cook you dinner.

no way, http://www.igniterealtime.org/. Openfire is amazing and with thier Sparks client it gets even better. Includes SSL, open API, different database backend, including LDAP. I've been running it for my office on a linux box connecting to a windows AD authentication. Best part about it is you can manage everyones contact lists. So no more invite this person add this person. Openfire (formerly Wildfire) is a real time collaboration (RTC) server dual-licensed under the Open Source GPL and commercially. It uses the only widely adopted open protocol for instant messaging, XMPP (also called Jabber). Openfire is incredibly easy to setup and administer, but offers rock-solid security and performance

I've got to second parent's promotion of igniterealtime.org. I set it up for a distributed group of IT workers. It's reliable, comes packaged inside Jetty, but runs in a variety of java application servers. Good database abstraction, great ldap authnz and groups integration, client/server encryption via ssl as well as client to client encrypted chat. The best part about it is jabber/xmpp, which means that you don't need to ask about a single multi-platform client. Sure, Pidgin runs on Windows/OS X/Linux/Solaris/etc, but you don't have to limit your users to a single client choice. Adium, iChat, Psi, meebo.com work great! The only problem is that jabber/xmpp doesn't have a mature voice or video component (yet?).

Are you serious?? Openfire for the XMPP (aka Jabber) server, and Pidgin for the client. If setup correctly, you can force SSL/TLS encryption. I've implemented this at my company and it's rock solid. Beats the hell out of any proprietary solution you'll find, if IM is your main goal. I'd recommend setting up XMPP service DNS records for your domain for a really slick implementation.

no way, http://www.igniterealtime.org/.
Openfire is amazing and with thier Sparks client it gets even better.
Includes SSL, open API, different database backend, including LDAP. I've been running it for my office on a linux box connecting to a windows AD authentication. Best part about it is you can manage everyones contact lists. So no more invite this person add this person.
Openfire (formerly Wildfire) is a real time collaboration (RTC) server dual-licensed under the Open Source GPL and commercially. It uses the only widely adopted open protocol for instant messaging, XMPP (also called Jabber). Openfire is incredibly easy to setup and administer, but offers rock-solid security and performance

BTW i'm not affiliated with them, i just have used thier projects for years. Go opensource!

I have been a fan of the Spark Client and Openfire Server as an IM platform for quite sometime. They are built on the XMPP and Jabber protocols. After being in a corporate environment before, I know it's hard to convince management to go with an OSS solution as they seem to think that if it doesn't have a price tag, it's not secure. The Spark/Openfire platform come in an 'Enterprise' flavor with support to appease management as well. Both the client and server are built on a plug-in style architecture, so it's pretty easy to include your own software add-ins. There are really too many features for me to really go into though.

I would recommend the open source OpenFire server. Install it on your own server, then set the preferences to force SSL connections. Then communicates passed between clients on any platform are SSL encrypted. Turn off local client logging for better security. Beyond that, it's all client-side stuff that doesn't port as well.

Nicodemus

Everybody is saying "Pidgin", but a client won't do you any good without a server to connect to, and if you really care about being secure, you shouldn't trust any third-party server that is publicly accessible.

You should probably set up your own Jabber server; I recommend Openfire, which is open source, easy to install, and pretty powerful. It is possible to mandate that all clients must use encryption to connect, which will do a pretty good job of keeping things secure, and you can use any XMPP client that supports encryption. If you don't want even the server to be able to read your messages, as others have suggested, installing an OTR plugin for your client is the way to go.

I would go about your problem by first separating the client from the actual protocol. If you are worried about cross platform I would of course go with an XMPP solution. You can do the following:

- Run an OpenFire server Here
- Pick from a slew of XMPP clients but I would problem pick the Spark IM Client (Same people as the OpenFire software)

This way you don't have to worry about Client A working with Protocol B across Windows/Linux/Mac.

Using XMPP is also an easy way to control your IM facilities as you can create an organizational system for creating names such as using email addresses as screen names and not have to worry about Bob from Accounting using PiMpMaSta23.

I would evaluate OpenFire and the Spark IM client and see if it fits. The server is very easy to set up and administer. You can also use Pidgin or Psi as XMPP clients although I think Spark is the most professional looking of the three.

"Openfire (formerly Wildfire) is a cross-platform real-time collaboration server based on the XMPP (Jabber) protocol."

Here, quit yer bitchin': http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp

"And since nowhere I've ever worked allowed IMs due to security reasons, I've never really used them"
at my workplace we use Spark: http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/spark/index.jsp
because the server is hosted on the intranet, so no real security issues and it's pretty damn handy for finding communicating across the office(s), much quicker responses than email.

You are kidding right ? What do you do when you have a company that USES Yahoo for its "approved" IM provider ?

Sorry for my spam of replies to your post, but I guess this can help more people out.

Seems like Openfire did indeed had support for avatars thru transports aswell!
"1.2.0 -- October 31, 2007
Improvements
[GATE-10] - Buddy icons are now retrieved from AIM/ICQ, XMPP/GTalk, and MSN"

Seems like file transfers aren't there, but atleast the server doesn't crash:
http://www.igniterealtime.org/issues/browse/GATE-310

And there are support for offline messages (I don't understand if there was for MSN aswell but maybe:)
"1.1.1 -- August 19, 2007
[GATE-196] - ICQ offline messages now working properly"

So atleast they do something :), if file transfers worked aswell it would be close enough for me :)

Cool with server in Java aswell, thought most people here don't like Java but I don't like them ;)

Currently my company uses Spark(LGPL), not fancy, but it works http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/spark/index.jsp
last company used MSN(seemed stripped down), didn't do any more than spark