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Of course, the best solution is to create a superior protocol and set of clients, get it standardized, and somehow get them widely adopted

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this supposed to be the goal of Jabber?

It doesn't seem to have gained much momentum in any case.

So why not switch to an alternate IM system altogether? *cough*jabber*cough*
If they're going to be such babies about letting *more* people use their system, let 'em. They're pretty much second fiddle to AIM, it seems...

the Jabber protocols are free, open, public, and easily understandable; in addition, multiple implementations exist for clients, servers, components, and code libraries.

Looks liek[sic] it's time for me to get started on that IM client project I've been meaning to start for years...

some links:

http://www.myjabber.net/
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-jabber
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Jabber-VoIP_Client/
http://www.jabber.org/pipermail/standards-jig/2003 -January/002541.html

The beauty of Jabber/XMPP tho is that there is the possibility of gatewaying to things such as SIP, so you can have the best of both worlds while maintaining a single protocol on the Jabber/XMPP side, so there is no need to worry too much about what will become the dominant voice protocol since there is the possibility of interoperability.

That's a tad unnecessary. Jabber is an open, extensible protocol which is relatively easy to handle. The standard exists to dissuade anyone from developing yet another IM protocol. From what I've read, the ideal is that Jabber proxies will be set up to translate AIMJabber, ICQJabber, and so on, so that Jabber only users can talk to everyone, and everyone can talk to Jabber users. Gaim, Trillian, and many other clients, on many platforms already support Jabber. I seriously thought everyone on Slashdot knew this sort of stuff.

What does this mean for Jabber?

Besides, who the hell uses AIM, Yahoo, MSN or any of the others anymore now that you can use Jabber?

That's the best part of your post right there.

Jabber.

Jabber.org.

Okay, fine. Completely switching is hard since many people still use ICQ/AIM/etc, but that's what clients that support multiple protocols, like gaim and trilliant, are for.

But whenever you have a chance, for projects, friends, etc. Use Jabber, the future will thank you.

So... how much will a Jabber-based or Gnome Meeting-based conference call or any of the other open-source IMing/conferencing systems cost?

Looks like AOL is giving us one of many reasons to quit AIM. Cleartext messaging is another big reason. Not that the NSA isn't recording everywhere, including our cell calls and can't break sophisticated communication codes anyway, but some modicum of an excuse for privacy might be nice.

That'll kill AIM. Good. 'Bout time the world moves to a better medium for instant messaging.

And notice I said "better for IM" - as far as I know, streaming XML isn't the best choice for video conferencing.

I think it's called MUC.

Well the're definitely planning it (I agree IMAP is definitely better in this application).

From the article:
Steve Gillmor: It also compares favorably to my corporate e-mail.

Sergey Brin: Well, thank you. There are some things that it is currently missing as compared to corporate e-mail--for example, disconnected operation--though we do plan to provide things like POP3 and IMAP support, which should help that.

If they implement IM I hope they go the Jabber route.

Or you could just use Jabber which can connect to just about any network. Jabber clients also run on almost any platform...

Or you could just use Jabber which connects to almost any network...

Google, if you decide you actually do want to do instant messaging, please just throw up a jabber server and give people a Google-branded client instead of re-inventing the wheel. I know I'm not alone in wanting wider adoption of Jabber, and Google could go a long way with that step.

This looks like a job for Jabber...

In what sense is Address Book XML-ey ?

I tried to make use of this outage to help convince people to switch from MSN Messenger to Jabber. Unfortunately everyone I know seems too entrenched in the Microsoft way of life to even consider switching. Jabber offers many independent servers so if one failed people would still be able to use another server.

All the more reason to start using jabber or other similar secure IM protocols. ALso, you might consider starting to encrypt your e-mail. Not that you have anything to hide, but simply because you dislike people (your government in this case) snooping about inside your personal stuff.

If my company had it's own internal IM that didn't require public servers out of our control, it may be feasible

Your company could run its own internal Jabber server. There are lots of clients for the employees, one of which would probably be suitable for or adaptable to the company's environment.

If my company had it's own internal IM that didn't require public servers out of our control, it may be feasible

Your company could run its own internal Jabber server. There are lots of clients for the employees, one of which would probably be suitable for or adaptable to the company's environment.

Well, you could always do XMPP pub/sub, as suggested here.

Where? I used to think that too, but the last time MSN went down for maintenance in the middle of a conversation (last night), I found myself with two ICQ contacts left to chat with.

Dear God: Please help the world to use Jabber.

I may be totally out of line, but the idea of single sign-on through tickets/tokens already works rather well with Kerberos. Why not incorporate Kerberos into the Jabber system?

Even installing Kerberos is not a bit deal anymore. For several years now it's been part of distros as ready-to-use RPMs or .deb packages. If you combine Kerberos with OpenLDAP, then you get great flexiblity with users and groups in addition to the security, scalability, and platform independence lacking for weaker substitutes like MSAD.

First you have to diferentiate service and protocol. A protocol enables services. Services use resources, a protocol does not. To create a protocol which does what you want, you don't need a huge server farm or a brain the size of a planet.

So because the obstacles to enable something you want are so low, it all boils down to purely selfish intents. Just like the spirit of the free software movement. Which nobody can deny that its real.

Take a random person who uses IQC for example. He/She has a friend who uses AOL-IM or worse MSN. They can't IM with each other. It happens that person 1 or 2 is a programmer who understands how the internet really works. He creates his own IM System protocol (and perhaps a demo implementation) as a hobby, which isn't rocket science after all. His IM system is extensible to include all other IM systems. So then (if anyone cares to provide this service, or if there is no need for such a service because it works p2p) he can get his own personal value from it. He can communicate with his friend.

Another alternative were that he creates a IM client that can connect to many IM services, which gives him seemingly the same value, but is not. He does not create a new protocol, he creates a new software. Only this particular software can then do what he wants.

With a IM system, that anyone can use, because it is only a set of protocols, anyone can write a client for that. So there are even more possibilities. :-)

Sooooooo... to get back to your question. Who provides it? If there is a open IM protocol then its up to anyone who cares, to provide this service and figure out how to generate revenue. If the protocol allows that (if its not p2p or something similar), he is fine to generate as much revenue from it as he can. How he does it is up to him.

Jabber is a current open IM system, which also extensible to other networks. A good starting point is jabber.org. Y!, AOL, MSN etc. are closed protocols. Which means the set of communication instructions is secret. Nobody can use Y! unless he uses Y!-Messenger or figures out how it works (which is hard and not as benefiting then creating a new system).

Jabber is even more like the internet, because you can connect small IM servers to build one large network. The messages get routed between the servers, so even the cost of providing this service is cheap. You dont need a server for 1 Mio people. You only need to host as much as you want. Anyone with a server on the net can have its very own part of the Jabber network. The gateways to the legacy IM systems like AOL and such, are still a kludge because they need to be enabled on every server. The better way were that all the IM providers would use the Jabber network.

But as the article states, this companys don't understand the internet.

http://www.jabber.org

Also, a mirror in case it gets slashdotted:

Really? I haven't been on the standards-jig mailing list for a few months, but I looked at the published JEPs last month. I didn't see anything about video conferencing, other than a stream initiation protocol. I also haven't seen any client implementations that support video conferencing. Oh, and that wasn't the correct l link for information about the jabber / XMPP spec.

Financial Services Firms (Banks) have been pushing the use of Interoperable Instant Messaging. A number of the bigger players have decided to use Jabber/XMPP as a messaging backbone to connect to multiple systems.

See the work that the Financial Instant Messaging Association (FIMA) is trying to do for pushing interoperability. Check the Membership list to see the list of players. Some of the members have Jabber/XMPP deployments that are over two years old. Others have proprietary systems like Lotus' Sametime and are looking to vendors like Jabber, Inc. and Antepo to help them connect to each other. Unlike other software vendors, Jabber, Inc, and Antepo are working with the community, Jabber Software Foundation to promote not just open software but open protocols, which is a giant step forward. There are many different types of language bindings that the community has built. The Jabber Extension Process, keeps things moving forward in a truely open forum.

Financial Consortiums that used to use proprietary IM systems are switching over to XMPP. Reuters Messaging, will connect to Jabber/XMPP servers as well as AIM and MSN. To get an idea of how serious this is. Reuters was the first to get a real commercial agreement to be able to use the AIM network without using the AIM client.

This is truly a great day for the "open" world.

Ah, so you want stream negotiation for features such as file transfer. Also encrypted sessions, for which another variant is already in use.

Whether they then make it through the IETF processes is yet to be seen, but they are being documented, either way.

Ah, so you want stream negotiation for features such as file transfer. Also encrypted sessions, for which another variant is already in use.

Whether they then make it through the IETF processes is yet to be seen, but they are being documented, either way.

Ah, so you want stream negotiation for features such as file transfer. Also encrypted sessions, for which another variant is already in use.

Whether they then make it through the IETF processes is yet to be seen, but they are being documented, either way.

Ah, so you want stream negotiation for features such as file transfer. Also encrypted sessions, for which another variant is already in use.

Whether they then make it through the IETF processes is yet to be seen, but they are being documented, either way.

As far as support, MS, IBM, Sun, and most telecoms favour SIP with SIMPLE for IM. I've no idea what the other entrenched IM players, AOL and Yahoo, want.

Sun includes (and advertises) a Jabber client (Gaim) in the Java Desktop System.

You can use TINS to negotiate voice and video. The X in XMPP is for Extensible.

jabber is an open source im system with multichat and ssl capabilities. just run your own server somewhere, let your users register with it, and presto!

jabber has built-in SASL/TLS support, is proven to work just great in intranets, and is free as in beer and speech.

there's also a variety of clients for linux, windows and mac os x, <shameless ad> the best being psi ;) </shameless ad>

Jabber also supports SSL and is extensible (so can support things like group-conference room logging).

It's not just open source, the XMPP protocol is approaching RFC status, and there is a whole suite of commercial products utilizing it.

Just take a gander at the Sponsors box on jabber.org for starters. You'll find products that drop into almost any environment, are based on open technologies, and can be complimented by many hundreds of open source apps... what could be better?

Closed IM systems are a thing of the past, if we want them to be.

Public Jabber Servers

Just pick a server that has the MSN option. Most of them do.

The Jabber protocol is another one that can be used (and is being used) for IM, and logging can go to XML and other ways. A Jabber client just has to be developed to handle it like "normal e-mail", and it's done.

Read up on it on http://www.jabber.org.

This worm is called Microsoft World Domination!

It is a well-known strategy:

• They implement cool new (sic!) fully-featured (sic!) software (that's what a lot of people think about MSN Messenger)
• They make subtle changes to standards and protocols ('you remember HTML?)

If you haven't, please take a look to Jabber, the free Instant Messaging!

For reference.

Meanwhile, I plan to wash my hands of the whole mess and use Jabber. Remember back when we had standards, and the internet was decentralized? It actually worked - there wasn't a single point of failure. When was the last time the entire email system went down? Jabber can offer the same reliability, and you don't aren't locked into a single server or client.

Besides being decentralized, Jabber tries to offer gateways, and many Jabber clients (such as GAIM) also play the "keep up with the proprietary protocol" game. So have the best of both worlds - get a Jabber account somewhere, and whenever your friends's servers lock out their clients of choice, convince them to get a Jabber account also.

First of all, you can't tax e-mail. As mentioned before, what exactly is an e-mail? It just packets with plain text formatting and some headers. That's all. Taxing packets implies that the sender will keep track of the packets being sent. It also implies that the machine sending the packets in the first place is doing what its owners intend it to do. So to effectively tax spammers, they need to be using their own machine (yeah, right) and install new software that taxes itself. Non-techies tend to think that things like e-mail are centralized like the Postal Service. It's not.

People need e-mail, right? But they don't need SMTP or POP3 or IMAP or any other old e-mail based protocols. What about Jabber as a replacement? SSL, double ended authentication, server to server challenges, open XML protocol, open source clients and servers... It's basically IM, but some jabber servers support saving messages while you are away like an inbox. Doesn't that cover what we need e-mail to do?

My point here is that IM and e-mail are essential to internet communication, but we (techies) tend to think of them as seperate entities. They can easily be combined, though, and that's what jabber does. A poll here points out that many people feel that e-mail will always be important to the internet, along with IM, but not go away in favor of IM. This leads me to believe that people don't see how similar they really are.

E-mail taxation is not possible and if it were it would only hurt those who couldn't bypass it. Spammers would get around the same way they get around blacklists and spam filters. They would also heavily invest in IM spamming. Jabber can help with both at the same time. Why? Because jabber server administrators can whitelist the "trusted" servers or just blacklist the bad servers. "But that's what we're doing now," you say. True, but the difference here is that jabber servers can insist that they accept messages only from other servers whose DNS forwards and backwords lookups (ip name) match completely. Then, you know who (server, not user) sent the message and if they are a spam offender you can contact their administrator or blacklist them altogether.

Here are the facts that are going through my mind when I put this together:

1. E-mail spam is getting bad.
2. IM spam is growing as well.
3. You can't tax packets.
4. You can't insist that people upgrade their software if it already "works." In other words, servers with open relays are going to stay that way if they still "work."
5. People don't care how it works, they just want an inbox and a contact list.
6. People will not go through the trouble of making their own digital signatures. So, don't think that OpenPGP will be the next big thing in e-mail. It won't, it's hard for people.
7. Jabber IM takes care of authentication and encryption, anyway.
8. People are already familiar with IM and wont care which protocol they use.
9. Jabber IM with message storing can be the "new e-mail."
10. People flock to "new" if it works and is easy. Kazaa is a great example.

So, when you write your senators, or whoever, make sure you let them know that there are alternatives to cutting spam down. But, because spam is a technical problem, you need a technical solution. Making unenforcable policies won't help anyone and can probably do quite a bit of legal damage. They don't want to hear that, of course, but it's the truth.

Oh, and support jabber!

• Composite files built at request time,
• The results of running a script,
• Interaction with a web application 1 2 3 4,
• Remote procedure calls and object access 1 2,
• Instant messenger communications, and sometimes
• Static files.

Yes, you can just connect to any one of many Jabber servers and it just works. You have to find a Jabber server that has the MSN connection up and working (I don't know if Jabber.org or Jabber.com has it though). Search on Google for open Jabber servers or click here and you can see what protocols they are supporting.

BTW: I have used TVJab in the past and liked it.

Screw them! I'll build my own IM network! With hookers. And gambling. On second thought, forget the gambling!

jabber

see http://www.jabber.org - they have the server & some pretty ok documentation avail on their site. You can also create an account there and on several other public servers.