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Jabber Gathers Steam In Australia
Jeremy Lunn writes "Jabber is on a rolling start in Australia with this article featured in The Age in Melbourne (and the Sydney Morning Herald) 'Jabbering classes push for more power' and the formation of Jabber Australia."
Jabbering classes push for more power
By Nathan Cochrane
June 10 2003
Next
A small band of Australian advocates of open source has joined a growing worldwide army trying to wrest the power of instant messaging away from Titans such as Microsoft and AOL Time Warner, handing it back to individuals and the enterprise.
Imagine if you were to send an email but it bounced back because the recipient lacked the software to understand your message. Or if you tried to make a phone call, but were told by a canned voice that your phone number was not recognised. That is the state of instant messaging (IM) today.
A user must install several IM clients - software chat programs - on their PC to communicate with others, and online chats often cannot be easily carried between services. Although some clients understand a variety of IM systems, they are not widely used and are liable to breaking at the whim of the entrenched proprietary IM providers, such as Yahoo!, AOL and Microsoft.
Dubbed "the Linux of IM", Jabber is an XML protocol devised in 1998 that transfers messages in real time across the internet. Its open-source, open-standard architecture readily allows individuals and organisations to create their own services on servers they own.
A side effect is greatly enhanced security and robustness of communications because messages are not sent in the clear to servers on the other side of the world over the insecure internet.
Jabber clients - software programs such as RhymBox that exploit the underlying Jabber architecture - also work with proprietary standards, providing the best of both worlds and unplugging the IM bottleneck.
Jabber's heavyweight backers include Intel, H-P, Sony, IBM and Hitachi, and telcos including BellSouth in the US and Orange. It is being formalised as XMPP (extensible messaging and presence protocol), an internet standard, by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
Despite such impressive achievements, the adoption of Jabber in Australia has been slow, which is the reason an advocacy and technology steering group, Jabber Australia, was formed in Melbourne this week, says its founding president, Jeremy Lunn.
In Poland, a million users hang off a single server, but there are far fewer users here and so far only 20 people have responded to the request for help on Jabber Australia's jabber.org.au website, Lunn says.
But the local chapter has high-level support from the Jabber Software Foundation in the US that pioneers the protocol. On its board is Melbourne-based Robert Norris, a Jabber Software Foundation council member and lead developer of the open-source JabberD 2 server.
"The key advantage in Jabber remains in the openness," says Lunn. "Jabber doesn't tie consumers to any one program or service provider. Consumers will now have a choice."
Lunn sees Microsoft's and AOL's decision last week to sign a $US750 million peace treaty, making their rival systems compatible or "interoperable", as a "half-baked" yet positive step towards knitting together the IM archipelago.
"It still doesn't allow people to run their own servers, such as in Australia, whether they be individuals, ISPs or businesses," he says.
However, it will make things much easier for users of Jabber because less code needs to be maintained for Jabber to interoperate with other networks, Lunn says. "When these systems do open up to the public, providing they use an open standard as the protocol, it's good for Jabber and all IM users, regardless of whether it's SIMPLE (session initiation protocol for instant messaging and presence leveraging extensions protocol) or the Jabber protocol."
Jabber faces competition from SIMPLE, also wending its way through the Internet Engineering Task Force a few steps behind, which has the support of IBM and Microsoft. But critics such as Lunn say SIMPLE is as simple does - it lacks the functionality and purpose of XMPP/Jabber.
"Although SIMPLE has some great advantages in compa
SIMPLE is simple and standard; a recipe for success.
no you still have to stick to aol and msn to find your underage targets sir
sorry to bust your bubble
Here is some info for those of you who would like to know more about Jabber and how it's doing in AU.
/ 13 152
r ou ps.htm
http://www.jabber.org.au/
http://australia.internet.com/r/article/jsp/sid
http://www1.hurgh.org:81/
http://support.jabber.com/jimhelpfiles/Shared_G
It seems to me there are a lot of similarities between jabber and IRC. The major two being that they're both open standards and they both distribute clients amongst many different servers.
Unfortunately, it seems like this makes Jabber prone to the same problemst as IRC: netsplits. Could anyone tell me if Jabber has any sort of elegant solution to this problem?
So it will let me reach out over the internet and Jab someone? Cool. I would like to Jab, poke, prod, and possibly main some spammers.
Moreover, Psi (psi.sourceforge.net) is a perfectly usable (just like ICQ) and cross-platform client. If GNOME is your style, there's Gabber.
So, what's the real problem?
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
There's also Exodus on Windows, too. I hate the fact that there isn't a Gabber2 yet... Julian please hurry...
Because I have insominia...
3 152
u ps.htm
http://www.jabber.org.au/
http://australia.internet.com/r/article/jsp/sid/1
http://www1.hurgh.org:81/
http://support.jabber.com/jimhelpfiles/Shared_Gro
And to prove I'm not karma whoring.... I'll post anonymously.
This problem was solved ages ago by Trillian, but AOL are always trying to kill it off. Isn't Jabber just *another* IM standard?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Cuz I ain't got time for the jibba-jabber.
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
I use Windows mostly for work, and all of my friends use Windows exclusively. Are there any good Jabber clients for Windows?
Is there any facility for end-to-end encryption?
Does it work over port 80?
like some new pedo tool.
"MOM! my computer jabber buddy wants me to go to
his house and jab with him"
Also covered in this article at linmagau.
Slackers at The Age are always behind the curve.
Jabber rocks....
Is there a system setup for connecting all the local, public jabber servers together to create a world network. Ie if I had the resources and wanted to could I create a server that allows people to connect to me and also talk to a host of international people as well?
As nice as it is been able to talk to people in my country only (Australia) is it as simple as ICQ in talking to people all over the globe?
I know not everyone would want to join such a system however this is what is required to really become popular with the *average* user, ie not anyone reading slashdot.
37 - what does it stand for really...
i've been using miranda for a while now.
it allows for protocol plugins so that you can use it with different IM networks. Check the site, people have been making tons. they get pretty whacky too, i know game server plugins exist. maybe a jabber plugin too. it puts it all into one nice clean little client unless you want it ugly and bloated and trillianish.
miranda itself doesn't give you a server to IM everybody on but the way it's designed it should be simple to modify it so that it does. this is the biggest difference between miranda and jabber.
miranda is open source, but the program is buggy (maybe only for me, maybe because i'm using windows client). so hurrah for them.
My sig says it all. And I hope that someday IM'ing is as easy as just picking up a telephone.
Go Jabber, Go.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
While it sounds like a great idea, I'm sceptical as to whether it will actually become widely used.
The big players have already claimed a significant section of the market. And the IM market is subject to the first mover effect (first in gets the biggest share) and the network effect (you need people to get people). It doesn't matter how good the protocol is, if there are only 10 other people you can talk to with it, it is not of much use.
Not to meantion that Microsoft's Messenger (*shudder*), comes stock standard with Windows XP, and is a "built in feature", just like the DOJ thing with IE. I wasn't able to purge it from my system, through any control panel, but had to locate the directory and remove it the old fashioned way. Sadly I think this is far beyond the skills of your average GUI-domesticated user, so people will just end up using it.
If you could get the major IM clients to conform to the protcol everything would be fine and dandy, but good luck with that....
Jabber is a great protocol and it has a lot of flexibility in it and will expand into who know what in the future. It is also quite popular here and it became my main IM protocol a few months ago. I use Miranda IM with Jabber plugin and it works perfectly stable. In Linux I use Gabber and it laso works just fine. I have a Jabber server runing on my home LAN and so we can easily chat even if the internet connection is down.
Thanks to all working on Jabber and clients for bringing us this great piece of code!
Live long and propser!
We recently deployed Jabber as our company IM protocol (yay, more waste of time). Unfortunately, our computers are somewhat backwards and the de facto standard has been Windows 95 (Yeah I know, I know) with a sprinkling of XP. The client that runs on the XP Machine is very, very nice. This client unfortunately doesn't run on 95. So we have a very substandard substitute for most of our workers. (BTW, If anyone knows of a good looking Jabber Client that runs on 95, I would be very grateful). Anyways, apart from client issues. The best bit about Jabber is that you can set up your own server, independent of ones run by the producers of the product (ala Yahoo or ICQ). So it is very good in a business setting where you want everyone to keep in touch without clogging email or wasting phone time.
The problem is that the average Joe doesn't seen openness as an advantage. If it doesn't allow him/her to chat to Rita, Bob and Sue on MSN and/or ICQ, then he's not going to change.
Openness is great and good and is a worthwhile goal, but unfortunately you have to tell Joe that in order to get the full advantages that Jabber has to offer he's going to have to change his client AND get his friends to change (and they'll not want to change unless their friends are going to change too).
Unfortunately for a lot of people - that sounds like too much hard work and they'll stick to MSN or ICQ.
Side note: Most of my friends use MSN these days having initally been initially on ICQ (we're talking 5-7 digit UID's) and they're not all techies. Some far from it.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Jabber Australia was incorporated several days ago, and has half a dozen young enthusiasts on the committee. The article in The Age probably ran a little early, because we don't currently have any services to offer the public...yet. We are in the process of putting together our website/forums/server/services, and it should all be up and running within a week or so.
:)
Our current website is very basic, but it's standing up to the Slashdot Effect so far.
- Tony (Jabber Australia Committee)
Some people may also be interested to see our coverage in LinMagAU
Jeremy
Melbourne, Australia
Jabber Australia
IMO the best jabber client for the windows platform (and linux platform) is Psi - http://psi.affinix.com - I don't use jabber any more (I use Miranda www.miranda-im.org) - Mainly because I had to take my jabber server offline for a while. When I put it back up, I am still going for Psi as a client!
The server runs on any port you wish! I ran mine on port 23 for a while (as a consultant in a firm where they had closed a lot of ports)...
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
In Poland, a million users hang off a single server
The server mentioned is run by tlen.pl, Poland's fastest growing communicator. Tlen has taken a big chunk out of both gadu-gadu and icq, both with notoriously poorly written clients and technical problems on the server-side. Tlen's approach has been similar to MSN's - along with a IM account you automatically get an email acct, which you can check in the communicator itself. It's actually a pretty nice package, if you can ignore the banner ads and the fact that they're up to version 4 and *you still can't search the archive*.
Along with Trillian and Gaim, another alternative is CenterICQ (console based for those who use screen!) CenterICQ site CenterICQ fan site
Jabber is more than "just" an instant messaging thing - it's a simple bidirectional socket-based generic DTD-less XML protocol that is computer-language agnostic. Unlike the request/response model of HTTP, Jabber messages are asynchronous (unsolicited messages allowed in both directions) and share a single socket connection until the session is complete. In each direction on the socket you have a single-rooted XML document. Each Jabber message is basically a sub-node of this document as parsed by your favorite SAX-style parser firing a callback when the message is received. There are some manditory tags for joining groups, broadcasting and requesting info among other things. For the most part you just support the message types that you care about and you can add your own application-specific messages with custom XML payloads. If a Jabber client or server is not familiar with a message type it is ignored. Nice. Simple. Effective.
I was being sarcastic, you cockslurper
Open standard.
XML based.
server side transports.
can be used for more than just IM (games etc. can use the same protocol, and it won't get a chat msg and a chess move mixed up)
you can ENCRYPT! as well as SSL... (This is great for large companies who don't want all of their communications being routed through Microsoft or AOL)
Well Marc is doing the coding from the UK, and our server is in the US, but it is about as Aussie as it gets right now :-)
It's not open source, but the aim is to produce a free Jabber client on Windows of sufficient quality to rival the likes of ICQ/AIM etc.
We should have a Beta out real-soon-now that is significantly more advanced than the alpha on the website, and will support SSL, XHTML, PGP, MUC, skins etc. Feedback welcome on the website.
Zilch
wigwam, umm...i mean tp.
At work we have been playing the "No you can't use yahoo messenger for internal communications" game for a fair while now, with people continuing to try despite the explanations that putting potentialy sensitive information over a system we have no control over is totally unacceptable in any security model.
Has anyone here succesfully rolled out Jabber in a corporate environment, how succesfull was it and how well did the users react to it?
Can Jabber authentication be tied into standard linux/unix account authorization systems so that it becomes possible to tell users they have an account and to access they use there standard user login and password. I assume it is relatively easy to stop the jabberd from connecting to other jabber networks as this would be a must.
37 - what does it stand for really...
Let me list some of its main advantage:
The analogy with current email system is hard to miss. Think how bad it would be if you are forced to use joe@hotmail.com and joe@aol.com as the only way to exchange emails. Even worse, you have to log into joe@aol.com if you want to send email to bob@aol.com, and then having to log into joe@hotmail.com to send an email to alice@hotmail.com. Not to mention that having to use the name joe2001@icq.com because joe@icq.com is already taken by somebody else.
Shameless plug: please try our jabber client at
www.akeni.com. It is runs natively on both Windows and Linux. It has some nice features such as tabbed chat window.
NT
Don't you just love articles on /. that have just as cryptic description as the title providing no clue to what it's about if you never heard of "jabber"?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
The problem with Jabber used to be that it didn't work. This article has inspired me to give it another try, and I'm glad to say it does now work, so I'm going to try using it for a while.
There's still a big problem that'll get in the way of user acceptance, however: it's extremely complicated. Some of the complication is unavoidable, in that you have a multi-server system with gateways to multiple external protocols. However, some of the issues are just down to the fact that it's a system where the clients are currently being designed and built by hackers, for hackers.
What is a message queue? Why do I need to care about it? I've never seen any other IM client that expected me to deal with such a thing. "Close the event window going to compressed mode"? Uh, whatever.
"Custom presence entries"? WTF is that, presence of people who don't exist? "Synchronize presence with multiple copies"--uh, why would I want that, in case I have multiple personalities? I just want to log on from wherever I am and have it work.
I'm not trying to be picky here. I'm a computer scientist. If this thing isn't blatantly obvious to me without looking at the documentation, there is zero, I repeat, zero chance that my mother and my arts graduate friends will be able to deal with it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Actually, the first 'release' of Gabber2 was made available today. You can get it here [jabberstudio.org]
Does Trillian get GPL in its next release? If not, I'm sticking with Gaim and everyone else should too. Multiprotocol, multiplatform, encryption available, and Free as in speech.
Does anybody know any web hosts that support Jabber on shared hosting?
LamerX writes: Here is some info for those of you who would like to know more about Jabber and how it's doing in AU.
[ReidNews]
I tried to install a few weeks ago but the port on FreeBSD 5.0 didn't seem to work right. I can't remember the exact problem right now. (I've successfully set up Jabber on FreeBSD 4.x in the past). I didn't have much time to try to figure out the problem and gave up. Can anyone let me know if they successfully got the port running on FreeBSD 5?
Most people reading /. know Jabber. Those who don't can follow the links and find out for themseleves.
your moms a rotting cunt rag
Does it bother anyone else when people post a correction to someone else's post, without reading the previous replies?
If I had some mod points, I'd love to mod you "Redundant".
Just a reasonable expectation from looking at other posted articles that there's enough content in most to discern something from a layperson's perspective. Let me know if I am entirely out of my mind to think this.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/win32/index.php
Gaim does AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, and a bunch of others. Check it out.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
well the msn transport really, is the fact that the nickname only shows up as a custom away status, and not as the actual name in the contact list. Does anybody know of a way (or has anybody modified the transport and put it on their server) that will show a persons nickname in place of their email on the roster - I'm not talking a client side hack here that would replace the status, but something that would work regardless of the client.
I seen somebody else mention that the transports are supposed to be a stopgap measure until you have convinced all your friends (and their friends and their friends and their........) to use jabber. Now as much as I'd like this to be true, there are some people (99% of my msn contact list, and 100% of their contacts I would guess) that wont ever change for some reasons of other (too hard, I like msn, blah blah). I really think that, as much as the jabber developers would want everyone to unite under one open IM protocol, they should realise that it isnt going to happen in the near future, and try to make the transports a little more polished, allowing jabber to be a direct replacement for the other IM's without any quirks, and allowing you to just log into the server from anywhere with any jabber client and start chatting to all your contacts regardless of IM.
Trillian is a nice idea too, but trying to solve the problem client side means that as soon as I move to a linux machine, I have to find a completely different client, with its own set of quirks, and set up each im account separately on both/all clients. If the problem was solved, and solved well serverside, then it would be a lot easier to migrate between computers/account/im systems.
This is what I would love to be able to use jabber for, but sadly, it just isnt up to scratch yet.
The public servers list at http://www.jabber.org/user/publicservers.php doesn't list any servers in the .uk domain. By guesswork I found http://www.jabber.org.uk/ but the front page says the server admin has had to close this server for new registrations due to traffic overload.
ISTM we should all use as local a server as possible, so I'm reluctant to register on the main jabber.org server.
If you don't pray in my school, I won't think in your church.