[jdev] jabber @ google talk ?

[Tijl Houtbeckers]

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 17:42:47 +0200, Bart van Bragt <jabber at vanbragt.com>  
wrote:

> Bart Matthaei wrote:
>> I agree that it would be really neat if google would enable S2S, but
>> blocking google in xmpp clients until they do isn't the way to achieve  
>> this.
> That's not what I meant. IMO blocking Google if they keep their network  
> closed as a last resort could be a way to put some pressure on them. But  
> I would _much_ prefer other solutions. My main point is that it would be  
> just bad if Google would only allow communication with people within the  
> Google network or with some (large) partners that they have agreements  
> with. That way we'll only have yet another network owned by a large  
> corporate entity. Sure, it uses XMPP but in what way would that be  
> better than MSN/AIM/ICQ? Sure those protocols aren't open but I can use  
> other ICQ/MSN clients which is the only advantage that a closed Google  
> Talk using XMPP would have.

No, Google permits you to connect from non-google-sanctioned clients. This  
is not the case on MSN, Yahoo, or AIM. That means you can run a "Google  
Talk" transport on a server. This transport would use an open protocol,  
which maps surprisingly well to XMPP ;)

> Remko: IMO only allowing some servers (providers) that you have a  
> (legal) agreement with is a Bad Thing. This way one large entity  
> controls who can and who can't play in the XMPP network. Sure you don't  
> need Google's permission to talk to jabber.org but if Google Talk ends  
> up having 80% of the XMPP users then it will be a very, very bad thing  
> to an open technology if you need their permission before you can talk  
> with that 80%.

XMPP is desgined to allow such a situation. If they think closed is better  
than open, we'll see. They certainly seem to make a point of it, even to  
their users (not just buried in some developer site), that open is better.

I can understand why they don't want just any server with open  
registration connecting to their network. The only reason our networks  
haven't been buried in SPIM yet, is that we don't have enough users to  
make it intresting yet. Which is exactly what Google hopes to change.

This simply is one thing where "we", the Jabber community, have not done  
much yet (the lack of need for it, being one of the reasons perhaps). Just  
days ago we were still talking about how it's not clear right now how  
TLS/SASL/Dailback should work together. Google apperently thinks TLS is  
very important, they'll definatly want *some* form certificate (so SASL is  
a must) to prevent an army of zombie machines to start flooding them with  
SPIM, and if they want to keep it as open as you seem to want, they'll  
definatly need dailback.

Since this was all "top secret" till a few hours ago, they could hardly  
come on here and have a nice chat with us about it. However, the minute  
their service went official, they already invited the community to think  
about this problem with them.