Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

XMPP Gets An IETF Working Group

Posted by michael on from the im-me dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The IETF has approved the formation of a Working Group to continue evolving the XMPP protocol." Interoperable instant messaging, who'd a thunk it. Our previous story has more information.

3 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. what XMPP really is by ageitgey · · Score: 5, Informative

    The headline is a little misleading. This isn't a working group to create some new standard for interoperability. This is a working group to evaluate and possibly improve Jabber's protocol.

    In other words, this new group will ensure that Jabber's existing protocol is secure and has good support for localization. But it has nothing to do with AIM/ICQ, Yahoo Messanger, or anything like that. You can use XMPP today - it's called Jabber (and it's pretty cool).

    --
    Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
  2. I fell for the /. hype.... by brassman · · Score: 4, Informative
    Actually installed a Jabber server yesterday. Should have dug a little deeper though; I got it from jabber.com instead of jabber.org, so it's going to expire in a month or so. (Duh.) Well, guess I've got some time to straighten that out.

    What really makes me shake my head, though, is the client they provided. It's locked on the jabber.com server. What's up with that? They sell you a server, and then give you a client that you can only use with a server they didn't sell you?!

    --
    "Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
  3. Just another IETF standard for IM... by jamezilla · · Score: 5, Informative
    FYI, this is only the latest offering in the arena of IM standards. There are 4 other IETF working groups related to IM standards:

    Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol (IMPP)
    SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE)
    Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
    Common Presence and Instant Messaging (CPIM) (Still a draft)

    In addition to these guys, Wireless Village is an IM standard created by Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia. It's getting very strong traction among wireless carriers who want to deploy IM on phones and other mobile devices. Of these different offerings, SIP isn't strictly an IM thing, but there are people trying to use it to set up IM sessions. Microsoft uses SIP in their Messenger offering (which is how they claim they are "standards-based").

    CPIM is probably dead.

    IMPP has some traction in the 3GPP wireless groups, but not really anywhere else (read "probably dead").

    SIMPLE has tons of backers including IBM (Lotus) and is probably going to emerge as one of the dominant standards.

    Jabber is just trying to stay afloat in all this standards chaos. This was a very good move for them since they actually have millions of deployed users. Jabber is the only IETF-related working group that can claim real-world deployment like this. None of the other standards have any subtantial deployed user base (if any users at all).

    Probably what will happen is that as IM servers emerge, they will support a handful of these protocols, just like email servers currently support IMAP, POP, etc.

    Notice that AOL, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo! are not pushing their protocols as standards anymore. They are plying the Mexican stand-off thing and probably will have to scramble to jump on one of these standards as things shake out.