[JDEV] Jabber, the Name

Tue May 15 15:15:27 CDT 2001

Just as an outside observation (donning heavy, flame-retardant clothing), it
seems to me that time would be better spent in getting the transports to
work correctly before worrying about what to call the thing.  Aside from the
basic, core jabberd and JUD (the two of which are
dead-easy-work-first-time-no-brains-needed), none (NONE!) of the other
provided transports work and there's no CORRECT documentation to tell
someone how to do a few simple cookbook configs.  

Even more egregiously, there are no documents telling anyone how to
interpret debug messages.  No offence, but "Merlin casts his spell" is
hardly useful as a diagnostic.

Or better yet, spend some time refining documentation, rather than kvetching
about the name.  If you guys really want the project to succeed (and I
FIRMLY believe that in time, it will), you might want to get your priorities
in order.  Solve the problems with transports, fix the docs, provide more
than very tiny, hastily-made, thumbnail HOWTO's; then worry about a
cute-n-catchy name.  Believe me, most of us will pick "works" over "cute"
any day.

As an ISP who really thinks that you have the start of a FANTASTIC product,
I have to say there's a lot more to go in before the name goes on.  PLEASE
don't fall into the M$ trap of coming up with a grand name, then have no
real performance behind it.  What you have in-hand thus far is MUCH too good
for that.  Respect the product, ensure that things that are supposed to be
in it WORK (and work together), and somebody PLEASE come up with some
documentation and support.

I'm sure we're not the only ISP anxiously awaiting a full-plate offering,
complete with easily-configurable transports.  Most of us have a
passing-but-workable understanding of XML--that's not the problem.  Even _I_
can inspect a document for well-formedness (honest, I didn't sleep in XML
class! Well, not ALL the way through...).  

In my defence, I've been configuring and compiling things for *nix for over
20 years.  If a reasonably-versed person like myself is having a great deal
of trouble due to the paucity of "What to do when it blows up"
documentation, think of the poor Linux newbie.  You may as well throw
sendmail at 'em right out the box.  (Speaking of things that sorely need
proper documentation!)

The problem is in when we attempt to configure things that would add REAL
VALUE to the product.  Those external transports ARE real value from a
small, independent ISP's viewpoint.  When the configs parse correctly
(jabberd doesn't complain, that is) and are entered exactly as the example
states (machine names excepted, of course) and the transport still doesn't
work, there are NO diagnostics to tell us what we did wrong.  "Not
configured" as an error message, when we can clearly see configs in the
proper place (according to the slim HOWTO) and in the documented format,
isn't a lot of help.

Running the jabberd in debug mode doesn't really help.  At no time did any
ONE process complain of ill configuration with a message along the lines of
"Hey, Stupid, fix <xxx/> in the config and this might work next time".  As
much diagnostic as we were able to glean was "returning unhandled".

What was returning from where and why fillintheblank was unhandled, no clue
was given.  If you want Jabber to catch on and be the thing to steamroll ICQ
and AIM for flexibility and utility (it could, it could!), then there's a
lot of setup work left to do.

Folks, I'd really like to see the Jabber project continue to evolve.  Rather
than waste bandwidth on picking names and logos, we might want to focus on
"what would make Jabber the next Ubiquitous Product On Every Desktop".  Like
diagnostics and config help.

What can we do to pitch in and help?

With deepest respect,
Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Flora Brunas [mailto:floraaquino at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 2:37 PM
To: jdev at jabber.org
Subject: RE: [JDEV] Jabber, the Name

Dixon,

Check out what Jabber.com has to say about the Jabber
project being open source:

http://www.jabber.com/open_source/enterprise.shtml 

An open source project is a community.  Communities
aren't controlled by a single corporation, which is
why the Jabber Foundation is a great thing and the
Foundation should control the use of the name
"Jabber".

Flora

--- Dixon Canario <Dixon at vitalcontact.com> wrote:
> Why don't you all start your own project give it a
> name, and make it open
> source..... and then you will probably feel the same
> way that the people
> that work so hard to make the "jabber" name come to
> live and that are also
> sharing this project with all of us... for free....
> and are now trying to
> make money out of it..... why don't you just make
> your own project and give
> it your own name......  why you all have to be
> trying to steal what belongs
> to "Jabber.com" yeah is open source....  but it is
> still their stuff.... if
> you all keep complaining about something none of us
> did or came out with the
> idea of it..... they might just make it
> "Closed-Source" ..... I just think
> that all the ones talking about... Why Jabber owns
> the name.. and all that
> crap about the name... are nothing but a bunch of
> Selfish .... Son Of
> #@%!%.................. tha's just my opinion... so
> stopped sending stuff
> about  the Damn name and let's talk about coding
> development and taking
> Jabber to the next level...........
> 
> Peace Everyone.. and yes I'm ready for the
> HEAT.......... so bring it on....
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: jdev-admin at jabber.org
> [mailto:jdev-admin at jabber.org]On Behalf Of
> Jens Alfke
>   Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 12:43 PM
>   To: jdev at jabber.org
>   Subject: Re: [JDEV] Jabber, the Name
> 
> 
>   On Monday, May 14, 2001, at 12:48 PM, Flora Brunas
> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Is Jabber.com the only commercial company
> allowed to
>     use the word "Jabber" for their company names
> and
>     products? This is not fair.
> 
> 
>   I agree. And this brings up a tangential question:
> what are the rules for
> Jabber clients' use of the Jabber "lightbulb" logo,
> and where can I get a
> canonical image of the logo to use in my client? I
> haven't seen any on the
> websites (wherever the logo appears it's joined into
> some other artwork in
> such a way that extracting it would be beyond my
> artistic skills.)
> 
>   -Jens
> 

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