[JDEV] Open IM (was Jabber Transports - New Architecture)

[Julian Missig]

On Wed, 2002-03-13 at 13:21, Jonathan Augenstine wrote:
> I thought that it was time for me to throw in my two cents worth.
> 
> I am relatively new to Jabber.  I have used IM for several years now on
> Yahoo.  I recently (in January) tried setting up an account on Jabber
> (jabber.org) and was successfully communicating with colleagues who were
> on Yahoo.  Then apparently Yahoo started blocking Jabber.  I was forced
> to go back to Yahoo.
> 
> The reason that I originally started investigating Jabber was for use as
> a server for routing messages between distributed applications.  I work
> for a telecommunications company and we liked the idea of having an open
> source messaging solution with the capability of handling the Internet
> and firewalls.  Plus we get all of the really cool features that come
> with Jabber - IM, presence, etc.
> 
> My point is that while I understand that Jabber got its' start in IM I
> believe that an overly narrow focus on that one capability falls far
> short of the potential that exists with Jabber and hence the real draw
> (more people using Jabber) and value (revenue being generated) that
> exists.  I believe that some of the initiatives that I see in the
> infancy (i.e. - XML-RPC/SOAP over Jabber and PubSub routing) are what
> will eventually be the real driving force behind Jabber.  You can get
> into a spitting contest with Yahoo and AOL but I believe, IMHO, that the
> IM route is not were success will be found.  I think to aim at being
> just another IM outfit is to aim too low.
> 
> Just one opinion among many.

Well, in my opinion right now we're getting out of an "IM slump" --
there was a *lot* of talk about non-IM uses for Jabber, and the people
who are interested in that have mostly clustered together. Don't worry,
as much as I want Jabber to be IM, I understand that it is more and
there are people who work on that. I prefer to work on mostly the IM
side for now, because that's what I want to do. But pub/sub is something
I've been asking for for quite some time now, so I'm trying to push
that.

There's no way anyone can restrict Jabber back down to "just an IM
system" now - until/unless there are separate protocols for "simple IM"
and "services" - in which case you can be sure there will be a common
base.

Julian
-- 
email: julian at jabber.org
jabber:julian at jabber.org