[JDEV] Jabber, the Name

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Hi Flora,

I think you have an interesting hypothesis regarding why the Jabber 
open-source project has not come as far as you and others might have 
hoped it would so far. At this point, however, I can regard your 
viewpoint only as an hypothesis. Why? Because a number of companies have 
already contributed technology to the Jabber community -- from small 
groups like Vedalabs (whose developers have contributed xdb_java and the 
Jabber Test Suite) and DesktopDollars (Lubos Pochman's xdb_odbc) to 
behemoths such as IBM (cf. the SashJab project). These companies have 
not been "deflected" from Jabber by the presence of Jabber.com in the 
community -- indeed, these companies are *already* putting "resources 
and money" into Jabber, which you claim no corporations can do because 
they are not "allowed to". There exists no gatekeeper who doles out 
permission to work on Jabber: it is an open technology that many 
individuals and companies are working with and contributing to.

As with all hypotheses, the proof must be found in the facts of reality. 
Personally I have not heard of companies that have been deflected from 
using Jabber technology or adding value to the Jabber community because 
they have not been able to call themselves JabberOne or JabberGroovin or 
whatever (again, I feel the analogy to Apache is apropos, despite the 
differences in the status of the copyright holder). If you know of such 
companies I'd be interested to hear about them.

Finally, I feel that your argument is centered rather strongly on 
corporations, and therefore cannot get to the root causes of why more 
*individuals* have not contributed to the project (where corporations 
necessary to the growth of Linux from 1991 to 1997 or so?). Thankfully 
we have had a lot more individuals interested in Jabber of late, sending 
in patches, talking about docs, and so on. Hopefully through the 
structure (and infrastructure) that we're starting to put in place with 
the Jabber Foundation, these individuals will be able to contribute in a 
productive manner to the growth and adoption of the open communications 
framework we call Jabber. That's what we're all working towards.

Best,

Peter

wrote:
> 
>>I want to very very strongly restate what Peter
>>said.... The lack of
>>powerful transports and document ation is because of
>>people, not the
>>corporations, and suggesting otherwise is a bit
>>ludicrous in my opinion.
>>These are mundane tasks, and basically no one will
>>ever step up to the
>>plate.  I have, and even I feel it sucks.  I get
>>bored and lose interest
>>in them for a while, and eventually come back.
>>
> 
> This shows my point, Temas.
> 
> People obviously aren't willing to do the mundane
> tasks.  Jabber.com comes along, and makes some
> progress on this, but still there are only 5 "core
> dudes" making progress in getting things out.  (your
> words)
> 
> If other corporations besides Jabber.com are allowed
> to get involved, they can put resources and money into
> this as well.  But other corporations are being told
> by Jabber.com not to mention Jabber in their company
> names, product names, domain names, etc, thus
> deflecting them away from Jabber and away from
> contributing to Jabber.
> 
> Also, I think more volunteer Jabber programmers & tech
> writers would get involved if there was the potential
> of several corporations possibly hiring them, not just
> Jabber.com.
> 
> If you want more than 5 core dudes, make Jabber OPEN
> for real!  
> 
> Flora
> 
> 
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