[JDEV] AOL Corporate Teamwork

[Colin Davis]

Jon Beckham wrote:

  I think your idea is valid, but how it was presented was poor. Jabber
is not like MSN messenger, or the Yahoo pager. It is an open source
project, which is free for anyone to work on. The minute that there was
a version of Jabber appeared with the AOL banner on it, there would be
10 without it.
  The protocals that AOL used are available. We can implement them
without their help. You write about wanting the newest versions, but
this is not something that is importaint. Jabber is designed to foward
the instant messages, and copying AOL's intergation with this and that
that they might think of next (example, I believe the next version will
have i-phone built in) in not what we need to focus on. 
  The Userbase of Jabber is currently quite small. To AOL, we are not
importaint until we have something we can show them, such as 1 million
or so users (Anyone care to try for a better number? I'm not sure how
many they would need). We are in no position to bargin with them. They
know this. I would also believe that the execs at AOL understand open
source software, as they are paying an entire department (Netscape) to
work on one such project (Mozilla). It would be my guess that they would
understand that this could be written out.

  The whole issue does bring up one point, however. We might _want_ to
let people know how there messages were delievered. This will appease
the compainies (at least a little), and is a use to users. For this I
would suggest that the servers speaking directly to the AOL server add a
line to the bottom of the message. This could be turned off my the
client, or the client could not implement the feature, and the message
would not be posted. This is where you could have your corporate message
(when we were much larger). We could let each server we speak to decide
what would be in their message. These could be posted to the website,
for those designing transports to implement. I would suggest it go in
the form of an XML tag, such as:

<message>
        <from name='nickname'>Elven</from>
        <thread>Hello world</thread>
        <priority>1</priority>
        <subject>This protocal taken from the Jabber.org web
page?</subject>
        <say> The next line would be from the transport that speaks to
the AOL (or ICQ, ect) server</say>
        <servermsg> This message was transported via the AOL IM network
</servermsg>
</message>

  If a transport did not implement this, no big deal, it just wouldn't
be displayed by the client. If it did, the client could then decide,
based on the user preferences, whether or not to display the message.	  
  If a client did not implement this, again, no big deal, the message
just isn't displayed. 
  If a company did not specify a message, we could just use a default,
like the one in my example message. I think that this would be a useful
feature, if implemented correctly. 
  
Can anyone think of any reason why this would be such a terrible thing?



> 
> I apologize for responding to an outdated e-mail.  There would not be any
> logo put anywhere without AOL's permission.  That would be stupid.
> The point of the _link_ not logo would be for a little bartering between
> us and them.  They get the priveledge of linking within the server (only
> when the AIM transport is used) in exchange for us knowing the specs a lot
> earlier than we currently do.  Basically, I only brought this up in an
> attempt to provide a more fluid interface between AIM and jabber a lot
> sooner than is possible.  It would enable us to get rid of bugs and other
> problems quicker, because we would not have to wait for AOL to release
> anything, we could corelease with them their client and our transport.
> Just trying to make it easier on everyone concerned.
> 
> I apologize for thinking stability, speed, and efficiency was more
> important than giving the image of not "selling out" to big business.
> However, there is no selling out, we are merely creating a partnership,
> not a reliance.
> 
>  Jon Beckham
> class of 2000
>   webmaster