[jdev] Jabber Trademark

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Geof wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter at stpeter.im
> <mailto:stpeter at stpeter.im>> wrote:
> 
>     naw wrote:
> 
>     > To me, it seems that Cisco is trying to confuse people and make
>     them think
>     > that Cisco is the owner of the protocol/IM system/comunity.
> 
>     Fortunately, you are wrong.
> 
>     /psa
>
> a wise old man once told me, "Geof, right or WRONG, sometimes perception
> becomes reality".
> 
> Do you not think Bill Gates and company would like to go back in time
> and set the record straight on somethings that have morphed from
> perception into reality?

The paranoia on this list never ceases to amaze me.

[But, as another wise old man once said: "Just because you're paranoid
doesn't mean they're not out to get you."]

However, I will take some time out of my work on finalizing the Jingle
specs to answer the ludicruous notions voiced on this list about Cisco
thinking that they are "the owner of the protocol/IM system/community".

First, the notion that a company could own an open IETF standard they
did not develop (or that a company they are acquiring did not develop)
is ludicrous. Every rational observer knows that TCP or HTTP or SMTP or
SIP or XMPP cannot be controlled or owned by a particular company. Cisco
does a lot of work on standards, so they are no exception. And people
there are much more sophisticated about open standards than people on
this list, it seems.

Second, people at Cisco know the difference between an open standard and
a particular implementation. Do you? The people at Cisco know that they
are buying a company that has developed a particular (and particularly
impressive) implementation of XMPP, not *the* implementation and
certainly not the protocol itself.

Third, the notion that a particular company could own the "XMPP system"
is also ludicrous. What would that mean? Because the "XMPP system" (such
as there is one) is a decentralized network of independently owned and
operated services, in practice "owning the XMPP system" would mean
taking ownership and control of every XMPP service on the Internet
(including private services that are not connected to the open network).
Again, this is prima facie ludicrous -- who in their right mind would
think that, because they are buying Jabber, Inc., they are thereby
taking ownership and control of Google Talk, SAPO, jabber.org, and every
other XMPP service in existence? Jabber, Inc. doesn't even own and
control deployments of its own software, let alone deployments of other
people's software! Have you no idea how contracts and property work?

Fourth, the notion that a company could own the XMPP community is also
ludicrous. Because the XMPP community is just as decentralized as the
network, with dozens and dozens of separate open-source projects and
commercial software developers, "owning the XMPP community" would mean
taking ownership and control of all those projects and companies. Who in
their right mind would think that, because they are buying the software
code produced by Jabber, Inc., they are thereby taking ownership and
control of the software code produced by Google, Apple, Sun, Nokia,
Chesspark, Pandion, Psi, Process-one, Jive Software, and dozens of others?

It's barely even worth the time and effort to debunk such ludicrous
notions (I can't even grace them with the term "ideas" or "claims"
because they are so far-out), but it seems necessary. I just hope that
serious people from serious companies aren't reading this list, because
the fact that folks on this list entertain such ludicrious notions does
not reflect well on the XMPP developer community.

Enough! I'm not going to post further on this thread for the rest of the
day, because we need to get Jingle done and I don't have more time to
waste here.

/psa