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It's a real struggle getting a server compiled and running with even the most basic of functionality, and many of the most interesting value-added features have little or no documentation.

There is an active development community on the JDEV mailing list and 'jdev@conference.jabber.org' channel, but like so many other open source projects out there, 90% of the developers are busy writing cool features, with really only Peter Saint-Andre (aka 'stpeter') putting any real effort into documentation.

A lesser problem is what some call 'fascination with the technology', and is a cause of the lack of users- most Jabber users are developers and admins who are more interested in playing with the new technology for it's own sake than as a way to communicate. Basically, 180 degrees from the motivation of the average AIM user.

It's a real struggle getting a server compiled and running with even the most basic of functionality, and many of the most interesting value-added features have little or no documentation.

There is an active development community on the JDEV mailing list and 'jdev@conference.jabber.org' channel, but like so many other open source projects out there, 90% of the developers are busy writing cool features, with really only Peter Saint-Andre (aka 'stpeter') putting any real effort into documentation.

A lesser problem is what some call 'fascination with the technology', and is a cause of the lack of users- most Jabber users are developers and admins who are more interested in playing with the new technology for it's own sake than as a way to communicate. Basically, 180 degrees from the motivation of the average AIM user.

It's a real struggle getting a server compiled and running with even the most basic of functionality, and many of the most interesting value-added features have little or no documentation.

There is an active development community on the JDEV mailing list and 'jdev@conference.jabber.org' channel, but like so many other open source projects out there, 90% of the developers are busy writing cool features, with really only Peter Saint-Andre (aka 'stpeter') putting any real effort into documentation.

A lesser problem is what some call 'fascination with the technology', and is a cause of the lack of users- most Jabber users are developers and admins who are more interested in playing with the new technology for it's own sake than as a way to communicate. Basically, 180 degrees from the motivation of the average AIM user.

Fully open ... like... oh, say, Jabber?

People might instead rally around an open messenging service like those offered by Yahoo!.

Or like Jabber, where no single company controls all the servers.

Note that Jabber is decentralized like SMTP is decentralized, not like Gnutella is decentralized.

Also note that a lot of Jabber clients support encryption/digital signatures now too.

What a good idea...

seems like a pretty good workaround to me until AOL gets slapped on the wrists by the FCC.

oh God, i hope the FCC doesn't get involved in this one. AOL/Time Warner may be a monopoly in a lot of markets, by why do we want government agencies messing around with software, especially in relatively new markets like IM?

perhaps with any luck this kind of behaviour will force many AIM users to switch over other IM networks like Jabber. and for the Windows people who use the "official" client, perhaps the lure of a more stable client without ads might get them to switch. but however it's done, let's hope it's by fair competition, not FCC involvement. the IM market is too young to have government intervention.

- j

This is why halfway through yesterday, Fire (the sole *real* method for i, a Mac OS X user, to connect to AIM and thus contact quite a few people i want to talk to..) and Gaim were still blocked from AOL, but Jabber peoples could connect just fine-- only, though, if they were on the jabber.org server, because that was the only one that had been fixed with the entry hack. That's the good thing about this approach, you have one small client and it can adapt to whatever happens. THe problem with this, of course, is that AOL can IP-block the jabber server, meaning everyone is simply screwed.. not sure how to get around that.

Note: don't feel *too* sorry for me. Fire has been updated, but requires OS X Final, which comes out tomorrow; there's a mac os x jabber client that i'm having trouble with compiling, but which binaries will be available for starting tomorrow; and OS X Final will have working java support, so i can run QuickBuddy (*shudder*) if i need to. So i'm locked into using micq in Terminal until tomorrow, which is unfortunate, and i may be forced to use *ugh* a telephone if i want to talk to some of the people i really do need to contact today.. but i'll survive. Still, this really sucks..

Jabber is a free IM standard which supports linking to ICQ, MSN messenger, AIM, Yahoo, at the server end - One client for all of these messengers. It's damn handy.

Jabber appears to be a me-too messaging client, at least from its web site. It looks like every other such client I've seen. "Innovative"? Just because it talks XML under the hood? Please.

Enhydra is indeed a fine project, and it's the only actually innovative software I've seen listed in this entire thread. I do think developer-facing products like this have the potential of delivering some of the claimed benefits of open source, but what about user-facing products?

Zope is a slashdot clone. Some innovation.

Postgresql is a me-too database product, yet another imitation of already existing products.

KDE and GNOME skinnability came years after Apple's theme switching announcements, and after a third party (Kaleidoscope) beat Apple to market with Mac OS skins.

So far, we have exactly one innovative product in this thread. For that reason, I don't see a reason to change my position: Open source remains a haven for imitations of commercial software. Open source has never created a new user-facing software product category. Open source does not innovate except for the occasional developer-facing product.

Tim

Jabber.

If you don't like all the marketing hype and shockwave movies don't go to jabber.com, but try the Free Software community site www.jabber.ORG.

Only the most formal of communications (usually CC'd to others) go to my boss via email or paper. The spoken conversations with my boss are usually the most productive and communicative.

I think it's different in the software world than in the pure Web world. In software, you're usually doing much less trouble-shooting, so email can be a better mechanism. On the Web, you've got a user having a problem, and you're expected to fix it in real-time, so email is just a little too slow.

I have yet to take the plunge and use IM for everthing. Jabber may change that for me....

See www.jabber.org.

Also, do a search for Jabber on sourceforge.

There are actually about 30 projects related to jabber, 20 of which are clients for several different platforms. (linux, windows, mac, palm, etc etc etc) jabber.org is a home-base type site for people working on the server code, the protocol, or the "transports" (server modules that allow you to talk to other instant messaging services.)

jabber-central.com is dedicated to people working on clients. The site also maintains a list of jabber servers you can connect to.

A new version of the server should be released later this month (well, as a client developer, i've got my fingers crossed, anyway.) The current version of the server doesn't work with all the transports, but hopefully that will fixed with the new release.

Jabber differs significantly from Everybuddy, et al. It defines/uses its own protocol, and it's up to the server to translate your message to AIM/ICQ/Yahoo readable form, not the client, as is the case with Everybuddy.

Also, Jabber uses XML based message packets, so it's relatively easy to make your own application that uses the protocol...you'd just have to write a client that understands your special xml tags.

Anyway, Jabber's a really neat project. Have a look. Yeah.

yer pal, captain suzanne

"PC LOAD LETTER??!? WHAT THE F--- DOES THAT MEAN?" ..michael bolton

Also, do a search for Jabber on sourceforge.

There are actually about 30 projects related to jabber, 20 of which are clients for several different platforms. (linux, windows, mac, palm, etc etc etc) jabber.org is a home-base type site for people working on the server code, the protocol, or the "transports" (server modules that allow you to talk to other instant messaging services.)

jabber-central.com is dedicated to people working on clients. The site also maintains a list of jabber servers you can connect to.

A new version of the server should be released later this month (well, as a client developer, i've got my fingers crossed, anyway.) The current version of the server doesn't work with all the transports, but hopefully that will fixed with the new release.

Jabber differs significantly from Everybuddy, et al. It defines/uses its own protocol, and it's up to the server to translate your message to AIM/ICQ/Yahoo readable form, not the client, as is the case with Everybuddy.

Also, Jabber uses XML based message packets, so it's relatively easy to make your own application that uses the protocol...you'd just have to write a client that understands your special xml tags.

Anyway, Jabber's a really neat project. Have a look. Yeah.

yer pal, captain suzanne

"PC LOAD LETTER??!? WHAT THE F--- DOES THAT MEAN?" ..michael bolton

With all of the focus on Everybuddy, it seams that Jabber has been left out of the picture!
Here is a messaging system that supports almost anything out there, including TwoWay Pagers, ICQ, IRC, AOL, MSN and Yahoo. Clients also work on a large number of platforms... Macs, Linux, Solaris, Web(PHP, Flash, Perl,Java) and yes, even Windoze.
www.jabber.org

Try Jabber. It is an open-source, XML-based, fully buzzword-compliant IM system. You can run a server on your internal network which people can connect to using one of the many clients available (such as WinJab). Plus, Jabber can communicate with other transport protocols as well, such as AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, or IRC. This can, of course, be modified at the server level to block access to external servers and/or protocols.

--

-Forager

Answer: Jabber... www.jabber.org full featured open source IM server and clients for most major platforms... Easy protocol ( XML ). It interfaces with all the major IM Services ( AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ ). I had it up and running in minutes. Also check out www.jabbercentral.com for the client side stuff.

If you want an open platform for messaging, try Jabber out. It supposedly supports ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, IRC, and SMTP through an XML framework. From what I've heard from the wear-hard list, it's pretty much maleable to anything you need to do..

Well Jabber can at least help you for now. There are several transports you can import into the native jabber system so that you can communicate with various IM's. While Jabber is far away from perfect for now i see a lot of promise and it works(at least when sending text messages to other IM's)
you can get the latest Jabber news and a roundup of clients at JabberCentral. Various Plattforms are supported right now.

Maybe you should have a look at: Jabber.org and Jabber.com. There was also a nice feature on Jabber in August's (or was it September's?) issue of Linux Journal. Jabber has the potential to integrate all of the above and more.

I tried Gale about 4-5 months ago. gale is strange. gale is basically encrypted zephyr without kerberos authentication. There are some nice things about gale, but it just didn't do what I wanted the way I wanted. YMMV.

after trying Gale, I tried Jabber. I think jabber is much closer to the answer I was looking for. I just wish it was closer to done than it is...and I REALLY wish there was a clearer map of all the jabber-related projects.

All I wanted was an easy to set up and easy to use chat/messaging server with encrypted communication and strong authentication.

IMHO,
Michael

Why don't you just convince all your friends to use Jabber and put an end to it.

I mean, if they're using AOL, do you really want to talk to them?


"What do I care, if life ain't fair,
If you look at me real sore.
I've paid my dues and you should too,

And we already unify support for AIM and ICQ (and Yahoo!, and MSN, and IRC), with our server-based "transports." Your client speaks one protocol--the Jabber XML protocol--and the server handles the translation. This can make Jabber clients much smaller than so-called "universal" clients; we're working on Java applet clients that'll be small enough to download over dialup connections without great pain.

And Jabber can definitely be used for more than just instant messaging; we've been experimenting with a Jabber-controlled MP3 jukebox program recently. In conjunction with another Jabber-based "remote control," you can control the songs that are played on another computer across the room, or across the continent. You can even have two or more remotes controlling the same jukebox. All the specialized messages required for controlling the jukebox and getting its status are just XML extensions to standard Jabber messages. (It's just a little demo we whopped up, written in Perl; it's not too sophisticated, but it does act as a proof-of-principle.)

Check out Jabber.org, JabberCentral, and, of course, Jabber.com.

Eric
--

But Jabber can do more than just instant messaging. We're actually demoing a little application that consists of an MP3 jukebox program and a separate remote control program, both written in Perl and logging into a Jabber server as clients. The remotes send messages to the jukebox indicating which songs they want played, and the jukebox sends back, in its "presence" message, information about what song's currently playing. And all done via the standard Jabber protocol, extended in a standard fashion, because it's XML. (We wanted to do a Jabber-controlled robot, but we only had four days to rig up a demo :-). )

Check out Jabber.org, JabberCentral, and, of course, Jabber.com Inc.

Eric
--

It uses XML to talk to a Jabber server, and in turn provides access to ICQ, AIM, Jabber client, and a host of others all from on central interface, and its open source!

I use it at the cyber-cafe I do work for to cut down on the number of different IM clients I need to install for people to use. The windows client is great, as are the *NIX/BSD clients.

Don't wait for AOL to combine the two, just do it yourself with the power of XML.

I know that it sends messages via xml, so perhaps you could create an tag, that would let jabber know that this content is encrypted and needs to be decoded before viewing.

Just and idea.

...you'd code a spec and update a Jabber client that follows the spec for encrypted, instant messaging. Jabber is fully designed for this type of activity; peer-to-peer or through the server (we don't need anyone creating specs for commercial reasons for protocols that should be open, anyway. Thank goodness for OpenNap.).

It's not "Stealing from AOL" any more than the UNIX clients are.

Is using Tivo stealing? Is taping a show and fast-forwarding through the commercials stealing? Is changing the channel when a commercial comes on stealing? Is using junkbuster stealing?

AOL created this protocol, along with the TiK TCL/Tk client, so people could create AIM clients for alternative OS's. NONE of these clients have ads. In fact, there is nothing in the protocol to grab/retrieve ads.

Precisely. AOL is welcome to develop a UNIX AIM client. If they put some useful features in it, I can put up with the ads. I think part of the reason AOL allows UNIX clients to get by without ads is the following:

1. UNIX users who use AIM are far, far, far outnumbers by Windows users.
2. It costs money to prevent UNIX AIM users from using a service that doesn't show ads. In all liklihood that costs outweigh the benefits (see number 1 for a reason why).
3. AOL probably doesn't want to alienate UNIX folks. Why? For one they probaby know that UNIX types will develop their own protocols, e.g. Jabber. Secondly, AOL and Netscape are buddies. It's been said that Netscape depends heavily on Mozilla. Who develops Mozilla? Right Virginia, UNIX folks (ok, not exclusively, but you know...). Thirdly, AOL really doesn't want to get people pissed at them with the impending Time-Warner deal.

All of the above reasons boil down to one thing: it's in AOL's best interest to allow UNIX AIM development to continue.

...it seems that several folks have taken to using [AIM] as their primary form of interstate comunication between departments/facilities. This forced our upper management to look into creating our own "chat thingie" without the file transfer (this is buisness after all). AOL is a closed standard, preventing us from acomplishing that.

Have a look at Jabber.org for the project's home, JabberCentral for info on clients, and Jabber.com if your company needs custom client or server programming done, or commercial-grade support for your Jabber needs. (Disclaimer: The latter entity pays my salary...)

Eric
--

...it seems that several folks have taken to using [AIM] as their primary form of interstate comunication between departments/facilities. This forced our upper management to look into creating our own "chat thingie" without the file transfer (this is buisness after all). AOL is a closed standard, preventing us from acomplishing that.

Have a look at Jabber.org for the project's home, JabberCentral for info on clients, and Jabber.com if your company needs custom client or server programming done, or commercial-grade support for your Jabber needs. (Disclaimer: The latter entity pays my salary...)

Eric
--

Corporations have a responsibility to the community. Maybe legally they're is nothing wrong, but it would be completely immoral. They would be hurting competition for the only purpose that they could monopolize the IM market and then take advantage of all the users by exploiting us. We are already locked into _their_ IM server. Do you want to be locked into AOL's software?, despite weither it is better?, but because it is the only one that is compatible?, and because AOL made it that way!! Do you really want to lose your ability to comfortably change software and strangle the progress of our IM technologies because AOL had a 'right' to do it because it was 'their' server. 2 words. Bull shit.

PS. For information on a open an free IM technology, look at www.jabber.org

The server is stable enough, but there are no good clients yet. Gabber may be good, but I don't use Gnome. Jarl makes it rather difficult to create a new account.

There are, fortunately, a few libs, though they take some finding. Net::Jabber is in CPAN, but not on the sourceforge page. Jabberoo is available on its homepage, but not its sourceforge page nor as a download from www.jabber.org, ostensibly the development center. The dev doesn't appear to be terribly coordinated, though, judging by the traffic on the dev mailing list and the info available on the website.

There are a couple of Python modules available.. sorta.. but no documentation whatsoever.

There's Jabberbeans, for Java. I don't know anything about the state of that.

So is anyone actually using Jabber? What client are you using?
---

The current release is about stable enough for daily use, IMHO...

/joeyo

What's really needed of course is a distributed DNS service, although that would be

1. a major security risk
2. speed up net.balkanization

Take a look at this location. It holds many variants of jabber clients. For example, I wanted to give kjabber a try which can be found here. I'm not on the jabber network yet, I'll try soon.

Take a look at this location. It holds many variants of jabber clients. For example, I wanted to give kjabber a try which can be found here. I'm not on the jabber network yet, I'll try soon.

Hi, I'm the author of the Jabber AIM transport, and I would like to point out that it is in fact OSCAR based. I have been active in the movement to have an Open Source OSCAR stack for a long time, and it was a no brainer choice to use it in the transport. TOC is waste in many aspects, but has a few fine points (it actually worked for a while ;-]), but just wanted to clarify that point.

--temas
Jabber ROCKS!

You forgot Jabber the best one of all. Usable not only AIM but also ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, IRC and it's own jabber protocol. Also, I got this Slashdot article's headline from the RSS Transport. Definitly the jack of all trades in instant messenging. The server is completely GPL'd and clients are finished or in the works for all major OS'.

For more info:

www.jabber.org
www.jabber.com
www.jabbercentral.com

Jabber.org
Jabber.com
Jabber Central

Eric
--

I would just like to point out that they have not changed their protocol at all, and their RFC submission was not an actual protocol, but rather a broad and general architectural overview. Little has been done to be accepting of people still. Although there are small glimmers of light.

--temas
Jabber ROCKS!

Use Jabber. It's an open protocol, and the server handles the ICQ/IM/MSN issues. Also, it has encryption and much better authentication than the other systems.

I was an Everybuddy user, until I found Jabber -- this is _much_ better.

You should have also mentioned Jabber which is a GPL'd protocol and has transports to ICQ, AIM, and Yahoo is being written as I type this.

i would suggest jabber instead of this aol or this icq crap. it's open, free (the protocol and most clients + the server), and everybody can set up his own server (like everybody can set up a mail server).
and... of course you can still contact icq or aol people through your favourite jabber server.
the urls:
http://www.jabber.org/ for the open source software.
and
http://www.jabber.com/ for a non-free windoze client (but the offer a stable server...)

jabber

If you're not impressed, then why are you posting this?

Oh right, I get it, you're trying to beat all of the "this is slashdot, not freshmeat!" crowd to the punch, right?!? (Moderators: Just kidding!)

Seriously though, if AOL is finally getting around to writing their own "official" client for Linux, then that's more Linux software out there, which is good in my book.

Personally, I won't even be using GAIM; I'll be using Jabber since I don't like the idea of *every* message I write being sent not only plaintext, but across AOL's servers - which gives them the legal right to read my message!

Jabber supports SSL connections (at least on the server side, I haven't seen a client that supports it yet), so at some point I'll even be able to have my conversations encrypted! (Of course, I could just ssh into my friend's box and use talk locally...)

--Cycon

Jabber is has a functioning and robust XML-based independent instant messaging protocol. It interoperates with AIM, ICQ and other IM systems. Clients are currently much more functional than AOL's linux beta. There's a good list of clients and user info at Jabber Central.

After managing to get Jabber working, from jabber.org, anything less is a major step back. ICQ is the only system that comes close... and only on windows, at that, becuase GnomeICU and other clients still don't have full functionality.

Of course, OpenProjectsNet on IRC is still my favourite place to chat (my nick is talon, say hi if you see me).