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• Open Protocol with open specifications, XML everywhere :)
• Easily extended protocol.
• Server side everything, including contact lists.
• A multitude of clients, for windows, Linux, and other OS's
• Server side Transports so you can talk to people on other networks as if they were normal jabber members. This even includes ICQ's ability to send SMS's. Transports exist for at least ICQ,MSN,Yahoo,AIM,IRC,SMTP, I even wrote a transport to talk to my Wiki.
• A simple client protocol that can be easily implemented on simple devices (Cellphones etc), most of the hardwork is done on the servers.
• Conferencing, multiuser chat.
• Lotsa other stuff I don't use.

• The Jabber Software Foundation
• Jabber Studio - A sourceforge like site for jabber projects.
• Jabber Inc - A company making money on working on Jabber solutions for other companies.
• Gabber - a (very nice IMHO) GTK client for Jabber.
• Psi - a Jabber client for the KDE people.

I guess I made the false assumption that everyone already knows what Jabber is, yet aren't using it. That was actually very stupid of me, considering what I was arguing :)

Jabber is an open IM system, which uses an XML-based protocol for interconnecting servers and clients. Your Jabber ID (or JID) is in the form "user@host", obviously following in the footsteps of other common internet protocols (most notably email, but also ftp, http, etc). Jabber also supports SSL in the core protocol.

Because the protocol is open, there are numerous server and client implementations, all designed to interoperate. Anyone can run a server, and there is no such thing as an "official client" (that would be as absurd as an official email client). The world of Jabber is much more friendly than that of closed IM, as the Jabber Software Foundation encourages developer participation.

Let the linking commence!

Jabber Software Foundation - The "JSF" handles all of the core protocol decision-making. There are members, council, and an enhancement proposal system. The website is also a nice hub for information, as there are links to guides, programming info, client software, server software, public server lists, etc. Start here.

Some nice clients:
Psi* - powerful and minimal cross-platform Jabber client (Windows/Mac/Unix), looking like Licq.
Gabber - a full featured GNOME Jabber client.
Exodus - a very featureful Windows client. Has a strange UI in my opinion, but lots of people like it.
Gaim - mentioned 100 times already in the comments area. This program is nice because it natively supports AIM (and other protocols), which can make your transition to Jabber easier.

Other areas of interest:
User guide - a good read for newbies.
jabberd - home of the popular open source jabber server.
Jabberd Admin guide - Read this if you want to run your own server.
Jogger - a Jabber-based blog.

*Note - I am the author of Psi. Please forgive the plug :)

Exodus is my personal favorite. Clean interface that is similar to most email clients.

Jabber Central (more pratical information on jabber)
Jabber Powered (an initiative to create products based on Jabber)
Jabber Studio (the development hub of the Jabber community)
Old Jabber documentation
Jabber FAQ
A nice overview of Jabber
Jogger (a jabber based weblog)
Jabber Python module
Unofficial Jabber user guide
Programming Perl(an O'Reilly book)

The sf-like site for jabber apps is as dead as a doornail as far as offering files or getting at CVS.

Jabberstudio is far from it. Subscribe to their CVS commits notification list and see for yourself.

Man. I sure wish chefmonkey was around to see this. He was touting how SIMPLE was the answer to the problem of interop only a few weeks ago. And not, AOL's not even going to play along. Guess he'll have to find a new party line.

From the Jabber from, you have a new push in the IETF, a *working* server-to-server implementation, and multiple competing implementations. (1, 2, 3)

What is the protocol lacking again? As I recall, there were some security concerns, but these issues are being dealt on, including integrating SASL support into the protocol. So why aren't people using this? There is a lot of momentum behind Jabber right now, and I think it'd be silly if companies didn't at least consider it as a solution.

If you're curious, you can always Jabber me. My JID is rynok@jabber.com. Add me to your roster and ask me any questions you like. I can't promise I'll have all the answers, but I'll certainly do my best.

The problem with Jabber IMO is the lack of co-ordination within the community. With many of the projects, they're usually left in a half-baked state, and no one is left to clean up after the original developer. Take a look at the MSN Transport or the Yahoo! Transport. As a result, we're left with shoddy implementations of gateways to existing IM systems.

The other problem with Jabber is the lack of quality client software for Windows. Much like on the server side, there are many different projects, but few are complete. For example, one of the most mature Win32 projects, WinJab was recently abandoned so the author could re-implement the same functionality in Exodus. I believe JIM is the most professional Jabber client available for Windows, however, I think development on it stopped awhile ago.

IMO, no Win32 Jabber clients even come close to the functionality and looks of clients like Trillian. There is no reason that this couldn't happen, but it requires hard work. Trillian has been a work in progress for at least a couple years now ... it wasn't written overnight. In order for Jabber to really take off in the consumer IM world, developers need to pool their resources so they can actually compete with the big guys, instead of just looking like a hobbyists instant messenger.

Jabber has a lot of potential, it would be a shame for it to go to waste.

The problem with Jabber IMO is the lack of co-ordination within the community. With many of the projects, they're usually left in a half-baked state, and no one is left to clean up after the original developer. Take a look at the MSN Transport or the Yahoo! Transport. As a result, we're left with shoddy implementations of gateways to existing IM systems.

The other problem with Jabber is the lack of quality client software for Windows. Much like on the server side, there are many different projects, but few are complete. For example, one of the most mature Win32 projects, WinJab was recently abandoned so the author could re-implement the same functionality in Exodus. I believe JIM is the most professional Jabber client available for Windows, however, I think development on it stopped awhile ago.

IMO, no Win32 Jabber clients even come close to the functionality and looks of clients like Trillian. There is no reason that this couldn't happen, but it requires hard work. Trillian has been a work in progress for at least a couple years now ... it wasn't written overnight. In order for Jabber to really take off in the consumer IM world, developers need to pool their resources so they can actually compete with the big guys, instead of just looking like a hobbyists instant messenger.

Jabber has a lot of potential, it would be a shame for it to go to waste.

There are 2 I know of: jabberd 1.4.2 and Tipic Instant Messaging Platform.

Not to mention the massive amount of Jabber clients.

I beg to differ. I develop the AIM Transport. I've also worked on libfaim, and was around for the initial introduction of TOC. TOC looked promising despite it's odd ASCII protocol, but we continued work on OSCAR because TOC was considered a side project and not 100% supported by AOL. As luck would have it AOL has proved that decision to be wise many times. They have stopped work on TOC numerous times and have even removed features from it. OSCAR has continued to grow. When AOL started to try and block us (Jabber) we grew fairly confident that their changes were directed solely at Jabber. The blocks always happened after minute changes I made in the aim source specifically, and we were told so in an indirect way. Some ended up affecting other libfaim based projects such as Gaim. Until everything was figured out I was heavily considering a TOC implementation. The problem was that would have caused problems for other programs using TOC if they continued to actively target Jabber. I decided this type of behaivour would be unfair to the other projects, and it continues to allow them to always have a "pure" channel. In the end it has all worked out. We have fully figured out their attempted blocks and everything seems to be moving forward. There are specific IP blocks on some of the larger Jabber servers, but that's life.

Currently I'm actively working on the AIM-Transport (more information). and expect to put out a version 0.10 in not too long.

What your talking about here is a particular implementation of a Jabber server, jabberd, not Jabber in general (people often confuse this point). You can do some minimal clustering with the jabberd-1.4 series, but probably not the kind of reliability that your looking for or that jabber.com has built into their server.

Jabber is an open system/protocol, anyone can build new servers/clients/etc with whatever features and extensions they want, including building it on/with xmlblaster. Jabberd is also an open source project that your welcome to help with (farming/clustering is a frequent need and I suspect that it will be a large part of the jabberd-1.5 development series).

I've got it working after some effort. The main thing I screwed up was putting the line in the wrong secion in the XML. Took me a while to figure that one out. D'oh.

See this FAQ on SSL.