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France Telecom To Support Jabber
AmX writes: "I've just seen on Jabber.com that France Telecom is going to invest $7 million in Jabber.com in exchange for a 23% equity interest in the company. Nice to see a big company supporting this technology. The details are here." With that kind of funding, perhaps Jabber really will become the next big thing. Not getting locked out of proprietary messaging systems would be a benefit to everyone. (Psss, don't forget jabber.org, too.)
Some things to keep in mind if you're a company thinking about using jabber (and I think jabber com/org is a good thing):
.com uses pthreads and .org uses pth (different thread libs)). The .com people are trying to add clustering and scalability that .org's code base doesn't have. I'm not sure if they're giving that back to .org
.org will continue to thrive (as opposed to before .com) now that its main developers are working for .com on a different code base.
.com server is relying on the .org server to do the msn/yahoo/aim connections). I'm saying this is good or bad, but it is definitely a factor if you're considering buying a jabber.com server and support to allow your customers to connect to aim/yahoo/msn.
1. jabber.com hired pretty much all of the original jabber.org developers.
2. The jabber.org guys changed away from GPL to jabber.com's own JOSL ("jabber open source license").
3. It is unclear (to me) if you contribute to jabber.org how/if your work will be pulled into jabber.com.
4. jabber.com is the "commercial" version of jabber.org. You pay them for it and they give various kinds of support. They've supposedly done alot of testing on it.
5. jabber.com is a completely different codebase than jabber.org. (for example
6. I'm skeptical as to how much
7. As of a month ago, the jabber.com server didn't support the msn/yahoo/aim connections because that code is contained in "transports" modules designed to work with jabber.org's vastly different pth-based code base. And my understanding was it would be a "couple of quarter" before they're in. When you try out jabber.com's open server and see that it does appear to connect to msn/yahoo/aim, the way they are doing it is they are running a jabber.org server side-by-side with the jabber.com server and doing a jabber-jabber intermediate transport (ie the
8. jabber.com won't sell support for aim/msn/yahoo because they can't "indemnify" it (or whatever) - they can't supposedly guarantee the connectivity. While it is true they can't guarantee the connectivity (until aim/yahoo/msn license it) it seems to me they can still sell it while explicitly stating they can't guarantee it. (I believe Odigo does - odigo.com is another IM solution that sells server, client, custom IM stuff).
Quote: Strange, I always thought that jabber.ORG defined the technology direction (rather than jabber.COM). I am happy for jabber.com though. $7 mil can definitely help keep them going for a while if used wisely.
To me, Jabber's strength comes from the fact that it's a distributed server system and not centralized. No one company controls the technology direction. Every company who implements the jabber server has complete control to their own userbase, and all devices that implement the jabber protocol should be able to talk with each other - this means that if we have IM implemented on all sorts of devices - Palm, Computer, Cell phones,
If a large company such as Microsoft... or even a consumer electronics company such as Sony steps in to support Jabber, it would go a loooong way to standardizing it. They don't even have to invest like FT... just step in and say, "We like this standard and will implement it in our future products."
Imagine a network solely to be used for say... College Students working on medical research who need to interact with each other but don't want to have to access the internet via the normal channels, email, forums, etc., they could have a client specifically created by Jabber to cater to their needs.
Imagine the Genome research companies all over the world sharing information via those same routes, they too could have a specially created client for them which could do things like fetch information via an XML add on for them. Example, CometSystems has a neat "smart cursor" based tool which allows any word in a page regardless if they have a hyperlink, and pull up information on whatever was selected. So imagine if Jabber did the same only it catered to no one but the Genome companies.
Thats where corporations would come in, to add revenue. There are many more instances of corporate uses I could think of for them to make money off the client. Make an SSL based secure transaction client to interact with Amazon and other vendors, so if someone sent their friend a URL for music, the user would be automatically be directed (should they clink a special link) to a vendor to purchase that record, or book, etc., there are plenty of ways to make cash with it.
All your base are belong to Dubya
Want Root?
- Because current messaging is getting old. SMS is excellent for simple messaging between phones but thats about it. - Because they want to be able to deliver other applications over IM. - Because there doesn't yet exist an IM solution that will work on every device, and Jabber just might be the one to do that. - Because its an Open Standard so it is more likely that third parties will devlop applications for it which FT can rebrand without the expense of developing apps themselves - And probably a bunch more reasons that I haven't mentioned.
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This isn't news. The French have been jabbering away at the rest of the world since time immemorial, and I'm sure they've been jabbering away on French Telecom at least half as long. :)
(Best British newspaper headline ever: "The Further Machinations of Froggy Telecom")
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Download the Jabber server source.
Some of the prettiest C I have seen. Comments where they should be. Written modular and split up into parts that make sense. Simply and elegant memory manager. Hell we ARE talking about the server to jabber. If you dont like jabber.com server start your own server and get your friends using it!
Best of all, my company has looked at possibly using Jabber server side and open documentation for our own custom chat client. Grab the windows jabberCOM and hack up a quick VB client, instant chat the way you like it...
Jabber is some seriously cool stuff and is IM the right way IMO.
Jeremy
How is Jabber making money? Other than hoping people will invest in them, what do they have to sell that people *want* to buy?
What I'm trying to say is, why will Jabber.com not become a fucked company?
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
The best part is the idea of a presence engine. This thing knows that you are online. It can aggregate and integrate IM servers. The XML could be modified to store other arbitrary properties. It could do the same thing for letting music stream to the computer you are on (regardless of location). There is a real potential for all sorts of applications other than IM (Think GPS or the mythical badges you wear at bill gates house that lets the house change background music or art according to your tastes.)
IMO, that is what is the cool about Jabber, an XML (and therefore more easily extended) presence engine.
Think how this could be used with X10. (Frankly I'm still excited about the fact that my programable thermostat wakes me up with heat better than the alarm clock does with sound.)
- jabber has some nice server-side features for blocking messages you dont want to see
- you can run your own jabber server if you want
- jabber supports an irc gatway
- jabber has its own "groupchat" protocol section
regarding the scripting issue, theres at least 2 solutions to that. the first is obvious: make a scriptable IM client. the second is to make an irc module to jserver. there is already a very basic one, but its old and im not sure if it works with the latest server version.that means you could use jabber from your irc client (join #jabber, your contact list are shown as users in the channel, online people have ops etc.) and you can join groupchat channels on any server. eg myroom@myjserver.org, jdev@jabber.org, ircchan%irc.light.se@irc.myjserver.org.
you could even add server side channel bookmarks and nickserv identifys.
> In really precise niche markets like electronic
> components.
Yeah, right. Like, for example, the tiny Alcatel which happens to be #1 on a tiny niche market such as ADSL, and which happens to be just bigger than tiny dwarves such as Cisco and Nortel combined. Niche markets, I'm telling you!
As far as FT is concerned, you obviously have no clue on the nomination process of the CEO, and on the decision-taking process inside these part-private part-state owned companies. You also seem to have a very peculiar source of informations for your percentage figures...
Oh, well. I suppose it's much more comfortable to see France through archaic cliches. Makes things simpler, doesn't it? What fun would it be to try o get a clue, if it forced you to ask yourself some serious questions?
> Is France trying to compete with other countries
> in todays electronics?
1st, France does very well in today's electronics, thank you. 2nd, it's not the French government who decides where FTT will invest its money, so THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.
You may not be a conspiracist, but at least you're a stereotype-prone ignorant.
Dammit.
Taking a look at their site, not only do they plan on making money for the 'windows' version of the client, but if you pay attention to the pics shown, you can actually have your own internal jabber server.
.02 cents worth, which with the recent crash of the market makes it more like .000045 cents worth.
What that means is that companies such as cisco, could set up their own jabber server to allow their CCO members to instant message with a Rep regarding problems (maybe bad example because if your network is down, no chance of getting to cisco in the first place).
When IM (read: icq) started becoming popular, I could imagine big companies providing tech support via IM. What happened to that? I don't know.. maybe the technology was too foreign to some of the execs and what FT is planning to do with the software is making it friendlier to the big cheeses, which will mean revenue and a return on their investment.
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That of course is just my
I'm just going to answer all of the why use Jabber questions here. :)
Security. Jabber has support for ssl and some clients (Gabber) have built in support for pgp. Also because it is really free and open you can set up an internal server if you want and never go to the internet.
It supports most of the protocols. I can still talk to my friends who use ICQ and can talk to my friends who are on Jabber and my friend who uses MSN from one client.
I have my profile wherever I go. Since contacts and all the other information are all serverside I can have the same setup at home, at work, on the road with no effort. Even if it was nothing but an ICQ replacement that feature would make it worth it.
It is open. That is a good thing by itself.
In short Jaber is good use it and support it add squadboy@jabber.org to your contacts.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
You forget that ICQ is controlled by a corporation. Here are the 3 main reasons to use Jabber:
1) No corporate control.
2) No central server.
3) Open standard.
This puts Jabber in the same class as email. I run my own server and I can say who can have accounts with my system. If some other server goes down, it does not affect me. This is how IM should have been since the very beginning. You can whine all day about the number of users AIM has, or how cool ICQ is, but when it comes down to it, they all suck because they violate those 3 items above.
Let's not forget that Jabber also has some good functionality:
1) Serverside contact list.
2) Multiple chat transports (for evangelizing to other IM users)
3) Authorization that actually works.
Go, quickly! http://www.jabbercentral.com/
-Justin
- Users' chat capabilities will be dictated by the client they use.
- The common method for making Open Standards profitable, is to develop proprietary extentions and enhancements to that standard (which make it no longer standards complient, as it was intended)
IM is not like the web. you can not expect to vive away a client then make money on selling a server with enhancements. The real-time nature of IM serves to magnify the problem that the web has always encountered, relating to the capabilities of the browser with respect to the server, or the content being served. On the web, you'll occasionally see pages that indicate they require special featured of IE or NS6 or what have you. If I recieved an IM message, intended for my viewing in real-time, and instead of being able to view it, I was instructed to get a newer IM client with more capabilities, this would not only srve to agrivate me, it would also serve to completely destroy the valie of an Instant Messaging system, because the content was not delivered in realtime as is the goal of IM.On the web, this is a minor annoyance, because vary little content is intended for realtime viewing (with the exception of some streaming audio/video content, etc.), but inthe IM arena this would be a serious problem.
So, here's my question. Where's the revenue stream? Is it in systems integration? It's certainly not in server sales alone. It might be in the provision of the service as a whole, but I don't see anyone getting away with charging a per-message fee at this point.
The only viable business model I can see is in integration, "We will integrate our IM system with your home automation system, or the hospital's heart monitors" or whatever. I can see possibly selling 'conduits' connecting existing email infastructures, paging systems, and monitoring solutions with a freely provided OSS IM solution, but that's kind of a streach.
Don't get me wrong. OSS IM solutions are great, but I'm not sure I see where the revenue streams are going to be coming from.
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
The technology already exists to send messages back and forth between mobile devices. Unless FT is looking to build some sort of proprietary version of Jabber, there doesn't seem to be any reason for them to have bought it in the first place.
Dancin Santa
i'll agree with you about icq being superior though, but the fact of the matter is this - it's too complicated for the average person. they have no interest in seeing a person's ip address - they just wanna talk with their friends that use aol.
it's a shame, too. because icq *is* superior, and licq is an excellent client, but i find myself using gaim most frequently (although i have both of them running at all times) because all of my friends use it. and not because they use aol - but because *their* friends do, or their friend's friends do, etc. that's why i tend to cheer on the development of gaim more than licq, and that's why gaim is developing faster than licq - the userbase is bigger.
icq is a superior protocol/setup. but it's just not as widespread. and it never will be. that's why aol bought it - so they didn't lose revenue to it.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.