[JDEV] FIMA

[Charles Miller]

Ulrich Staudinger propagated the following meme:
> 
> I personally think jabber lacks some real advantages for financial
> services or the similar over simple. Zion and me have already started
> working on a jep for transmitting ebXML and EDI data via jabber. I hope
> this brings jabber into an advantegous position. 

Now I'm curious. Beyond buzzword-compliance, is there a practical 
application of EDI over IM? Systems that consume EDI don't tend to
move around a lot.

As for Jabber vs Simple, the way I see it is this. In the Joe User space,
the point of distinction for the IM services is purely "Which ones are my
friends on?"[1]. In the corporate space, the point of distinction is "Which
one integrates best with my existing messaging infrastructure?", which
explains why Lotus Sametime is going gangbusters in companies with large
Notes rollouts.

The point is, neither of these distinctions have _anything_ to do with
the underlying protocol, and everything to do with who the vendor is.

Charles Miller
    [1] This isn't 100% true. There is also a secondary factor in the
        client UI. I find I'm using AIM a lot more than I used to just
        because I find iChat to be nifty. Sadly, UI is probably Free
        Software's biggest weakness.