[JDEV] Jabber Advocacy

[Julian Missig]

Michael Brown wrote:
> Can someone tell me if there is any organised Jabber advocacy?

No.

> 
>  
> 
> [Long rant follows]
> 
>  
> 
> I get the feeling that Jabber is a great standard with way less 
> publicity than it deserves.  I can see the day where Microsoft wins the 
> IM wars in the same way as they won the browser wars, and Jabber lives 
> on as nothing more than a niche product for the rest of its life.

Yep.


> 
>  
> 
> Back before AOL started blocking Jabber servers, the mentality was that 
> Jabber was for us - we were right because we ran Jabber - less educated 
> users ran AIM, but we could still talk to them.  This isn't the case now.

Well, it can be. Someone needs to make aim-t not crash constantly and 
I'll be ok since I run my own server ;)


> 
>  
> 
> I think there are ways we can work against this, and maximise the 
> chances for Jabber to flourish, but I'm sure that there are many I 
> haven't thought of, so I look forward to other peoples ideas. 
> 
>  
> 
> Is there anyone out there that is of the mindset that we shouldn't do 
> anything, and let people judge Jabber on it's technical merits alone?  
> There is something to be said for the argument that time is better spent 
> improving Jabber than fighting political battles that we cannot win, but 
> I believe that without some exposure to Jabber, the public are not even 
> going to think about it let alone switch to it.  Remember, we are 
> working against MSN Messenger icons on every Windows desktop from XP up; 
> those annoying AOL ads where the schoolgirl says that she is so pleased 
> she can chat with her friends since AOL invented Instant Messaging.

I'm fairly certain that most of us want Jabber to be promoted, but most 
of the people involved in Jabber are not the PR type.

> 
>  
> 
> First of all, I am surprised that there is no Jabber Advocacy mailing 
> list - has one ever been proposed?  Or maybe this is the role of the 
> Jabber Foundation/Council.  Either way, it doesn't seem obvious or grass 
> roots enough.
> 
>  
> 
> How about a Jabber webring?  Anything that can group together all the 
> great websites out there can show that there is a significant community 
> behind Jabber, and it is more than the sum of all its parts.  Is there a 
> way we can set up a Jabber ad server, so we can promote each others 
> products on our websites?

I've never liked webrings. They always seem so cheesy... and ads... I 
don't want any more ads. :)


> 
>  
> 
> Corporate Support.  It's good to see companies like Jabber Inc out 
> there, as it give the technology a corporate farce, but lets face it - 
> Jabber Inc doesn't have much in the way of industry muscle.  What are 
> the chances of getting some major companies involved?  From what I can 
> tell, the only major player that is showing any support is IBM, which is 
> strange, because Jabber is (at least in part) directly competing against 
> its Lotus Sametime product.  What about seeing if Apple could be 
> convinced to place an icon on the next MacOS desktop.  Redhat should be 
> a sure bet.  Putting an icon to a Linux client on every desktop install 
> of Redhat would increase our userbase and give Redhat a feature that 
> they appear to be lacking when compared to Microsoft's offering.  The 
> same should be true for any other Linux distributions, but I have yet to 
> hear of one such company that is even running a Jabber server yet.  
> Also, there are other companies - Sun, Palm, Nokia, Sony, etc that make 
> platforms that could benefit from Jabber.  Then there are web based 
> companies - all the free mail providers that could use an offering 
> similar to MSN Messenger that Hotmail is offering; Portal services etc.  
> The list goes on.

Yes, except that in order to get a company to get behind an entire 
technology like Jabber you have to get organized connections into 
multiple layers of a company. That's something which is very difficult 
for an Open Source organization to accomplish -- typically the companies 
which incorporate such technologies do so of their own will...


> 
>  
> 
> Media coverage.  All the stories about AOL blocking MS, IM wars and even 
> interoperability stories - Jabber is almost never mentioned.  Jabber Inc 
> do a good job with their press releases, but there has to be a way to 
> make the media more aware of what Jabber is, and what it does (and why)

I've certainly tried a few times, but we just don't have a good enough 
handle on why the general population should care about Jabber. 
Personally, I'm having a hard enough time selling it to fellow open 
source developers, the same people who refuse to MS Office documents 
because they're closed! (Yet they're fine using AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo!)


> 
>  
> 
> IETF.  Can someone who understands the inner workings of the IETF give 
> us a short summary of what process we need to go though to get Jabber 
> listed as an Internet standard, and an honest estimate of our chances of 
> succeeding?

We've tried this route twice and have several people involved in trying 
to make this work.
http://www.jabber.org/ietf/


> 
>  
> 
> ISP's. The idea behind Jabber is that each ISP can offer an IM service 
> in the same way they now offer mail and news servers.  Does anyone know 
> of any ISP that is actually doing this?  Can we get some examples of how 
> popular it is?  Feedback from the customers?  Can anyone think of any 
> ways to encourage ISP's to offer a Jabber server other than writing 
> emails?  Can anyone provide an example email that we can send to our 
> local ISP's?

Yes, there are several somewhat major ISPs which have adopted Jabber. I 
think the only way this will happen is if the actual customers of the 
ISP talk to them, not outsiders.

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