[JDEV] Jabber DevZone News - Jabion: Huh? What are we doing? Where are we going?

[Jabber DevZone]

Jabion: Huh?  What are we doing?  Where are we going?


A bit of wisdom from fortune:

A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at
such
a speed, if feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now.  But
the
sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you
will
know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.

     -- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul



That's the best way I can depict what this text is about, it's myself
reaching higher and trying to look beyond the Jabber horizons.  That
said, it's mostly a
collection of my personal thoughts about and goals for Jabber moving
forward.


Social Impact


This is a large part of my own "why", and the motivation that helped
me start the project years ago and continues to help me focus on
ultimately what's most
important: us.  We, as a society, like to talk, and the more we
communicate our insights and share our knowledge the more we benefit
others.  The Internet has
been a revolution in this process, making incredible strides in the
power and potential of every individual to reach out learning and
sharing.  One of the most
recent and incredibly popular forms of communication on the Internet
is obviously chat/IM.  It connects people anywhere instantly through
simple low-tech words
, and it uses those conversations to build relationships.

 Why is it then that such a powerful new form of communication is
completely proprietary and owned/operated by large self-serving
corporations?  The Internet is
about open platforms, decentralization of power and control, but yet
IM stands as a paradox to these traditions.  Jabber has always been
about ensuring that this
platform returns to the people, that we can again have control over
our conversations and have choices in our software and service
providers we entrust.  We've
built a platform that is more powerful both in the technology and
distribution of control, now we need to highlight the impact that IM
has on shaping the future
and place importance on who we are trusting with that future.


Interoperability


To fundamentally believe in the distribution of control means that a
platform must be willing to deal with parts that want to behave
differently, and be
openly interoperable with those parts.  We can't turn our heads to
anyone or any technology, there are no enemies, only future friends. 
Being able to adapt to
new environments and flex to wrap around or fit into new protocols and
services has always been a characteristic of Jabber.  Instead of
investing our energies
into competing or pushing our software/protocol as the solution, we're
quite happy to simply build bridges to closed services and expand the
platform to encompass
new ideas.


This has allowed us to focus and mature the platform into a viable
solution, and will continue to help us expand into the new directions
that people are
taking IM and XML.  It hasn't however helped convince the larger IM
world to become fully Interoperable.  Since Jabber has started, almost
every large IM service
provider has sung the praises of Interoperability, while in reality
finding excuses to avoid or simply ignoring it (this fact should be
blatantly obvious to
everyone at this point).  One of the important things that we as a
community can do is clearly define what Interoperability means and how
it can be easily
achieved by all the IM networks (it's NOT just a client protocol, it's
allowing communication to individuals without requiring they be part
of your user-base!).  
There is no good reason that nobody is Interoperable other than
Jabber, if we can do it so can anyone else who cares to focus on the
technology and not the
politics.


XML

 XML is fascinating :)  It's a simple set of rules by which a profound
change is happening in the software world, a change which seems to be
more social than
technical.  XML is the key for Jabber being able to flex around, adapt
to, and Interoperate with many other environments.  Our focus on XML
has evolved Jabber
into a very unique platform by which the next generation of
applications and services can route bits of data with intelligence and
meaning.  The evolution of
Jabber as a generic XML router, a new XML email, a personal XML
server, an XML services platform, and XML middleware, is set to
continue and help ensure the open
ideals of Jabber are part of the future of XML.


Some of the next steps include demonstrating how Jabber can wrap and
move XML around the network, building services and applications on top
of Jabber using new
XML namespaces, creating bridges to and methods of accessing XML data
in other environments, and exposing the platform via new access
methods more fitting for
generic applications.  There's already been a good deal of HTTP
integration begun, and will continue as XML-RPC and SOAP become part
of the platform.  


Community


As the community of interested individuals and companies around Jabber
grows it'll become even more important to communicate openly, freely,
and frequently.  
There are many misconceptions about what Jabber is, and we need to
make sure that our shared vision for Jabber is obvious to the rest of
the world, by talking,
sharing, and helping others understand the technologies and values.
All of us have dreams of ways in which we want to use Jabber,
calendaring, application
back-ends, groupware, collaboration tools, games, intelligent agents,
and we need to communicate theses dreams and help each other build
them.


We need help, it's as simple as that.  Our community has done an
incredible job and it's time that we show the benefits of the work
we've done and involve
others in building the future with us.  Client development has had
significant interest and can always use more, but the server
development team is tiny, we don't
have enough people familiar with the server codebase, or enough
tracking issues and maintenance, or working on performance and
scaling.  There are many other open
source and XML projects out there that share similar goals and we can
mutually benefit from sharing the work.
Much effort has gone into the new web site at jabber.org and more work
is planned to make it as interactive and accessible to everyone,
inviting
participation.  I welcome everyone from all backgrounds to become
involved in the Jabber community, together we can build technology to
bring people together.


Since fortune was so kind to help me set the scene, I'll let it help
with the departure as well:

A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.

     -- Stanislaw Lem