[JDEV] Re: [IM-patents] MS Patents IM 'composing' feature

[Peter Saint-Andre]

On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 12:51:28AM -0400, Nicholas Doyle wrote:

> I tried (briefly) to hack this feature into Gabber 0.8 earlier this year, but got sidetracked.  I can't remember the specifics of the spec now, through I remember the Jabber docs being somewhat brief about this feature (and other x:events?).  Though I remember seeing on Jdev recently there is a new JEP for 'composing' now?  I believe this feature is extremely useful in IM programs (hence, trying to add it to Gabber, I know Gabber 2 already has it), almost necessary really, to try and have a proper conversation without constantly cutting each other off.  It would be a shame if the IM community, and particularly Jabber/XMPP, lost the use of such functionality because it is now MS's IP.

This functionality has existed in many Jabber clients since '99 or '00.
It even exists in Gabber 0.8 (and earlier) but doesn't seem to appear in
the GUI (I see it all the time in the debug window). The new JEP is a
standards-track proposal to supersede jabber:x:events, but that in no
way invalidates the prior existence of jabber:x:events.

Linus Torvald's advice to open-source programmers regarding software 
patents is: don't read them. Linus is a wise person.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
Jabber Software Foundation
http://www.jabber.org/people/stpeter.php