Slashdot Mirror

Personally i take all of this Google "thing" (*paranoid*) with some doubts, the concentration of information (a LOT of personal data) never will be good.

I use Jabber(i use it from centericq, imcom, Gaim, kopete, among others) for a long time ago, and i REALLY try to all my friends start using it, but they still use the (lack of "geek" features and stability) MSN Messenger. I really wait the Google IM program, becouse jabber exist for some time ago, and IMHO doesnt have ANY reason to use the Google servers. The good thing of this news is that maybe with the Google IM all my friends (and everybody) start using a FREE IM protocol (i say that for Jabber)

Personally i take all of this Google "thing" (*paranoid*) with some doubts, the concentration of information (a LOT of personal data) never will be good.

I use Jabber(i use it from centericq, imcom, Gaim, kopete, among others) for a long time ago, and i REALLY try to all my friends start using it, but they still use the (lack of "geek" features and stability) MSN Messenger. I really wait the Google IM program, becouse jabber exist for some time ago, and IMHO doesnt have ANY reason to use the Google servers. The good thing of this news is that maybe with the Google IM all my friends (and everybody) start using a FREE IM protocol (i say that for Jabber)

You can do that, provided both servers are standards-compliant. Here's a list of standards-compliant IM clients and a list of gratis, standards-compliant IM servers.

You can do that, provided both servers are standards-compliant. Here's a list of standards-compliant IM clients and a list of gratis, standards-compliant IM servers.

You can do that, provided both servers are standards-compliant. Here's a list of standards-compliant IM clients and a list of gratis, standards-compliant IM servers.

Jabber servers can have bridges (gateways [1]) to other IM networks. Currently all big IM networks can be reached this way. Not all without hassle, but it is possible.

iirc, iChat is also some sort of extention to the Jabber protocol.

I hope google will do this, based on a true OpenSource/Standard implementation. This will the hopefully take of big, like gmail did. And they will probably come up with a funky webinterface to it.

Still many are using hotmail/MSN in my country (holland) and i rather see these to things disappear.

[1] http://www.jabber.org/user/userguide/#usegateways

Here's some food for thought: imagine a simple instant messaging program, written in your favorite programming languages. One the connection to your chat party is established, all you need to do is send the text the user types, and wait for incoming text and display it. Now, imagine implementing the same sort of application in an environment where the only possible communication is you making an HTTP request and receiving an XML response.

What, like Jabber?

I agree with a lot of what you're saying (as per usual), but I think you're looking at it from the wrong angle.

Does AJAX work on all browsers? NOPE. But MS Word does not on all computers. Or even editors. That didn't stop it from becoming a standard that is very important - and has in fact made people switch platforms. AJAX allows you to switch to a cheaper platform with basically no retraining. Linux + firefox isn't much different from windows + explorer looks and functionality wise if your apps are all on the intranet.

AJAX is "good enough" and "fast enough" to replace maybe 80% of commercial software apps. Intranet apps. The timesheets your workers fill out. The Petty cash forms. Think about the administration teams of offices.. and how many offices need administration. It is easier to maintain and upgrade versions of these apps for your systems administrator.

As long as web standards insist on the heavyweight request-response model, they will never achieve the snappiness, responsiveness, and flexibility that can be achieved with proper applications.

I take issue with this, mainly because I don't understand what you need to send over the network that makes an AJAX app slow?

Yes, I prefer local apps. I use my computer a lot, and i want it to feel responsive. No AJAX apps are not ready to replace MS Word. And definately not ready to replace 3d Studio. But the things programmers and other people in niche markets use their computer for is not the thing the majority of users use their computers for.

Um... MSN is still a form of IM. Sure, it's not standards-compliant, but neither is AIM.

Yeah, real nerds would be using a standards-compliant IM program and insisting others who want to talk to them also use it.

Sorry? jabber.org is a website just like aol.com or msn.com is. What if it goes down?

Then pick any one of the many, many severs available. That or start your own.

Actually, what we need is a messaging protocol that isn't tied to some website.

Jabber anyone?

Anyone had any luck with running Jabberd on FC4? I kept getting segfaults, backtrace is here. Never did figure out what was wrong, but falling back to FC3 "fixed" it.

Also, if anyone wants to set up Jabberd to log to PostgreSQL, I've put some notes on that here. It includes notes on using Ruby's ActiveRecord with that setup too, good times...

I think ICQ is better, but if nobody I know is on it there's not much point, is there?

There is a superior messaging protocol which is totally open, which has a pile of quality free(freedom and better) client applications, which is not dependent of private servers and that, depending on the servers the client connects, it can also connect with ICQ, AIM, MSN, IRC, etc. I'm talking about jabber

Have you tried it yet?

Open source did not create IM, but they copied it to death. How does Jabber and the lot innovate?

Ever heard of talk, Zephyr or IRC? Zephyr provided decentralized networks and cryptographically secure authentication (via Kerberos) of the origin of messages in 1987, something most (all?) proprietary IM protocols still don't do today.

Open source did not create IM, but they copied it to death. How does Jabber and the lot innovate?

Ever heard of talk, Zephyr or IRC? Zephyr provided decentralized networks and cryptographically secure authentication (via Kerberos) of the origin of messages in 1987, something most (all?) proprietary IM protocols still don't do today.

Do not IM him (and hey, what IT department hasn't locked IM along with everything else down anyhow).

Jabber anyone?

... or is that not an option?

Why not use Jabber? Jabber can use gateways to reach other IM protocols. One of the better jabber-providers is jabber.org.uk. They have msn, aim, yahoo, icq and irc gw. Oh, and it is free software!

I'm running a jabberd2 server in my company with lots of users with no problems at all. It is free, stable and has a plethora of clients for all major platforms.

Is there a _serious_ msn-im feature that jabber lacks?

I've recently heard of another protocol for sending messages to people who are offline. It seems well tested, and at the moment there are many people using it.

There are several clients available, here, here, and here, and there are many others. Hope that helps.

You know what? I am still not completely convinced about Big Blue yet - See the number of IBM patents still on Instant messaging...

It may not be mozilla-based but still, take a look at psi. It is cross-platform, it is open-source software and it uses an open protocol: jabber.

Jabber dude, Jabber. I'm sure, working for IBM you have some extra servers laying around.

http://www.jabber.org/

Jabber!

I've been using it for over a year now.

Well, there used to be jabberd quickstart. But it's now a few versions behind. Really though, jabberd is very well documented and not that difficult to set up. I know several people who have done it. Also ejabberd is becoming quite popular, but I haven't installed it yet, so I don't know how easy or difficult it might be. The hardest part is the transports, but core jabber functionality works by basically changing all the instances of localhost to your server name in the config file. And besides, users of AIM mostly aren't interested in running their own server, but they can definitely go ahead and download a client and start using one of the public servers. Many of them even offer the transports to legacy IM services.

YESSSS!!!

Jabber offers so much, including:

• Potential for full control of message path using an open and extensible protocol.
• Ability to carry messages over a secure connection (i.e. SSL); this is well supported.
• Flexibility to use different clients and servers, all which interoperate without the worry of a protocol change specifically designed to break 3rd party clients. There is no concept of a 3rd party client.
• Support for cross-communication to those other chat services with those awful EULAs, just as a stop-gap until the world becomes fully enlightened. This does NOT require a multi-protocol client... it is called a "transport", and it lives on a server. One login, full communication... that's easy!

There are a number of freely usable Jabber servers, so you can begin enjoying it right away, without setting up a server yourself. Just because you're using one server doesn't mean you can't talk to users on another. Your Jabber ID is in the form username@server, just like an e-mail address, so this ability is intrinsic to the design of Jabber. This is the beauty of a decentralized model.

An excellent Windows client is Exodus. A popular cross-platform client is Psi (based on Qt). Even the ubiquitous GAIM has support for Jabber. And very soon, iChat in Mac OS X will support Jabber! I've even considered making my own cross-platform Jabber client; isn't it great that we have that option? For more information on Jabber in general, visit jabber.org

The most widely used Jabber server software is jabberd 1.4. It is usable in Linux and Windows. For a concise comparison of open-source servers, click here. For a comprehensive list of Jabber servers (both open and commerial), click here.

NOW HEAR THIS -- Start using Jabber!

YESSSS!!!

Jabber offers so much, including:

• Potential for full control of message path using an open and extensible protocol.
• Ability to carry messages over a secure connection (i.e. SSL); this is well supported.
• Flexibility to use different clients and servers, all which interoperate without the worry of a protocol change specifically designed to break 3rd party clients. There is no concept of a 3rd party client.
• Support for cross-communication to those other chat services with those awful EULAs, just as a stop-gap until the world becomes fully enlightened. This does NOT require a multi-protocol client... it is called a "transport", and it lives on a server. One login, full communication... that's easy!

There are a number of freely usable Jabber servers, so you can begin enjoying it right away, without setting up a server yourself. Just because you're using one server doesn't mean you can't talk to users on another. Your Jabber ID is in the form username@server, just like an e-mail address, so this ability is intrinsic to the design of Jabber. This is the beauty of a decentralized model.

An excellent Windows client is Exodus. A popular cross-platform client is Psi (based on Qt). Even the ubiquitous GAIM has support for Jabber. And very soon, iChat in Mac OS X will support Jabber! I've even considered making my own cross-platform Jabber client; isn't it great that we have that option? For more information on Jabber in general, visit jabber.org

The most widely used Jabber server software is jabberd 1.4. It is usable in Linux and Windows. For a concise comparison of open-source servers, click here. For a comprehensive list of Jabber servers (both open and commerial), click here.

NOW HEAR THIS -- Start using Jabber!

YESSSS!!!

Jabber offers so much, including:

• Potential for full control of message path using an open and extensible protocol.
• Ability to carry messages over a secure connection (i.e. SSL); this is well supported.
• Flexibility to use different clients and servers, all which interoperate without the worry of a protocol change specifically designed to break 3rd party clients. There is no concept of a 3rd party client.
• Support for cross-communication to those other chat services with those awful EULAs, just as a stop-gap until the world becomes fully enlightened. This does NOT require a multi-protocol client... it is called a "transport", and it lives on a server. One login, full communication... that's easy!

There are a number of freely usable Jabber servers, so you can begin enjoying it right away, without setting up a server yourself. Just because you're using one server doesn't mean you can't talk to users on another. Your Jabber ID is in the form username@server, just like an e-mail address, so this ability is intrinsic to the design of Jabber. This is the beauty of a decentralized model.

An excellent Windows client is Exodus. A popular cross-platform client is Psi (based on Qt). Even the ubiquitous GAIM has support for Jabber. And very soon, iChat in Mac OS X will support Jabber! I've even considered making my own cross-platform Jabber client; isn't it great that we have that option? For more information on Jabber in general, visit jabber.org

The most widely used Jabber server software is jabberd 1.4. It is usable in Linux and Windows. For a concise comparison of open-source servers, click here. For a comprehensive list of Jabber servers (both open and commerial), click here.

NOW HEAR THIS -- Start using Jabber!

YESSSS!!!

Jabber offers so much, including:

• Potential for full control of message path using an open and extensible protocol.
• Ability to carry messages over a secure connection (i.e. SSL); this is well supported.
• Flexibility to use different clients and servers, all which interoperate without the worry of a protocol change specifically designed to break 3rd party clients. There is no concept of a 3rd party client.
• Support for cross-communication to those other chat services with those awful EULAs, just as a stop-gap until the world becomes fully enlightened. This does NOT require a multi-protocol client... it is called a "transport", and it lives on a server. One login, full communication... that's easy!

There are a number of freely usable Jabber servers, so you can begin enjoying it right away, without setting up a server yourself. Just because you're using one server doesn't mean you can't talk to users on another. Your Jabber ID is in the form username@server, just like an e-mail address, so this ability is intrinsic to the design of Jabber. This is the beauty of a decentralized model.

An excellent Windows client is Exodus. A popular cross-platform client is Psi (based on Qt). Even the ubiquitous GAIM has support for Jabber. And very soon, iChat in Mac OS X will support Jabber! I've even considered making my own cross-platform Jabber client; isn't it great that we have that option? For more information on Jabber in general, visit jabber.org

The most widely used Jabber server software is jabberd 1.4. It is usable in Linux and Windows. For a concise comparison of open-source servers, click here. For a comprehensive list of Jabber servers (both open and commerial), click here.

NOW HEAR THIS -- Start using Jabber!

Link to Jabber.org just in case folks need it.

This news bugs me, as an AIM user. I've been using Jabber since I found it about a year ago, and I've loved it, I just haven't loved the fact that so few of my friends use it. Considering this, though, I forsee a potential mass-migration to Jabber. It would be the sensible thing to do, though from my experience, it probably won't be what people do. :/

Was looking again at jabber earlier today... it's come along way, with a solid, well defined, if perhaps slow moving, process. Many features have been fleshed out, including ssl, tls auth, db backing, multi-network bridging (msn, aol, icq, etc), server-to-server networking, group chat, legacy presentation (ie jabber to irc gateways), etc. Much more solid than other IM networks, and much more open.

jabber.org

The terms of service stated information about registering with AIM, but what is their stance on using the AIM service with 3rd party clients?

To use 3rd party clients, you still need a login, so abide by the same terms.

On another note, it says that this will affect you if you registered after February 5th 2004.. How could they change the rules now and not make the date effective as of now?

Probably originally there was a clause that was "we reserve the right to change these agreements at any time, and post changes to www.yaddayadda.com"

Are there any open source sort of IMing protocols?

Yes

Why aren't you using Jabber instead?

It's Free Software, it's non-evil and there are clients for every platform out there.

You can even use it for cool stuff like IM'ing system alerts to you, as a cheap replacement for SMS on mobile phones (AUD$0.02 vs AUD$0.25) and to publish and subscribe to news feeds.

Why even bother? We have an open-source IM protocol, why not just develop for it?

Bzzzztt....

Sorry, thank you for playing.

You only need huge great servers if you think like AOL and wish to control everything. If you use protocols like XMPP (e.g. like Jabber) then you can have decentralised small servers very similar to how email works. That way you have much greater scalability and openess.

Give it a shot in Gaim, Pandion, Adium, etc. Jabber.org has a list of public jabber servers you can register with (you register within your client) and from there can begin toying with it. It usually dosn't matter what server you pick, as you can message and have buddies on other servers, as well as use services (like transports to other protocols, chat rooms) on other servers. The most popular is jabber.org, but you can use another server or install an XMPP compliant server of your own.

More info here, thanks to wikipedia.

You mean like Jabber? ;)

I've been trying to get to their development stuff for the last several weeks. Many of their source projects are currently shut off due to a break-in. I'm especially interested in documentation for libjabberoo.

I'm sorry, but it's too late. I and all my friends switched to Jabber last year. We say NO to proprietary standards, and we know you do too.

Just say NO to AIM and YES to JAB.

Yahoo is the cleanest, free email and instant messenger for anyone, plus news & multimedia, between the three yahoo is the best...

Google is nice but lacks an instant messenger client...

Why would you want Yet Another Instant Messenger? At least if you have a gmail account, you can still send e-mail to whomever you like. If Google creates an Instant Messenger, all your friend(s) will have to install yet another IM client.

No - we don't need another Instant Messenger. What we need is an IM standard based on an open protocol like Jabber.

Though if Google created an IM client which was in fact based on Jabber, it might give Jabber the boost it needs to slow down the spread of crappy, proprietary IM protocols like ICQ and Yahoo.

• Use the same code for the start-up sequence of your program as you do for crash recovery - treat them the same. Fewer lines of code leads to less chance of an error. That's all.

Not just that -- accept that crashing is a valid way of shutting down your program. In other words, be kill -9-safe. Also, include crash recovery in the first place; an orphaned pid file (hello, Jabberd!) or an orphaned lock file (yo, Lucene!) should not prevent a program from starting up. It's incredible how prevalent these little rough edges are.

And the benefit AltMe provides over Jabber is...

I use Jabber, you insensitive clod!

Open Standard, Decentralized, XML-Based Protocol. Could it be what you're looking for?
http://www.jabber.org/

This is why you should use an open IM network like Jabber.

Amoungst other things, it's well designed enough not to require everyone to use a central server - run your own server if you want and you're then responsible for any screwups on it.

Indeed, especially as the technological base needed for asynchronous delivery on a subscription basis has been just about completely laid out.
Heck, it can even deliver the same RSS items.

Or just send out messages on jabber or psyc.

http://xmpp.org/drafts/draft-saintandre-atompub-no tify-01.html

I doesn't have a Slashdot subscription because I don't think that it
is a big enough advantage to be able to view the article a little in advance e.t.c.

What I would like subscribers be able to is:
1) Post comments before the article goes live.
2) Get a jabber or psyc notification the exact moment that a new article is viewable.

If you're looking for a better IM network, why not try Jabber? There are loads of clients out there, which won't break, since the protocol is entirely open. If your client of choice doesn't support other networks, you can talk to people who aren't on jabber using server-side 'transports' to connect to other networks via Jabber itself.

~phil

... .csv is not good enough for an address book anymore. There are too many fields (many of which won't be used for all entries) so viewing your book as a spreadsheet becomes tedious. Plus, there is no way to store picture information in a .csv file....but I wish the three would get together and hammer at a way to have a really powerful address book standard