XMPP Gets An IETF Working Group 101
An anonymous reader writes "The IETF has approved the formation of a Working Group to continue evolving the XMPP protocol." Interoperable instant messaging, who'd a thunk it. Our previous story has more information.
I fear for the weak willed (Score:2, Interesting)
What, Adam, what about pornography?
While pornography is a sin, there is something about the instant feedback of an IM session that quickly dissolves one sense of right. If you look at a pornographic picture of a threesome, Satan may tempt you, but you are able to quickly dismiss him and delete that filth. But if you talk about a threesome on an IM, soon enough someone will also talk to you about it, and the two, or three of you quickly degenerate into very sinful talk.
Similarly, if you look at an unclad woman, you may feel some loin-stirring, but most men can quickly turn away. But, if you start to IM with a woman, you soon start to feel an emotional involvement, and you may find temptation outide your strength.
From my counciling groups, I have found that 70% of affairs have started via "innocent" IM chats. Anything that eases IM chatting, including a universal client, makes it that much easier for people to be tempted into sin electronically, rather than focusing on the hard work of making a real world relationship work (yes, I know it's Slashdot, but some of readers will eventually be in a real relationshop, heed these words so that you can make it work).
In my parenting workgroups, I tell parents to get rid of chatting clients; AIM, jabber, Yahoo Instant Messenger, AOL. I tell the same things in my engagement workshops. While the children and couples protest at first, years later they thank me. You will to.
Re:Finally some good news (Score:5, Interesting)
What this is really directed at is getting IM clients to be able to interoperate. Initially this was going to be done in the protocol that AOL was drawing up, however they dropped development on that and have been somewhat antagonistic towards interoperating with other IM providers.
From a business perspective having half a dozen IM clients (yahoo, aol, icq, msn, jabber, etc.) on different desktops, that don't interoperate is a bit of a pain to support. Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL would very much prefer that businesses would standardize on their own service, however if you have to work with outside vendors you have no gaurantee, that that vendor will use the same service, or that you will be able to interoperate with it.
You might be able to set up your own gateway using jabber, or a couple of other servers, however one of the ways that AOL uses to "protect their users" is to only allow so many users at a time connect from the same IP address. If more than that connect, they block the IP address. That might be OK if you are a mom and pop operation with only four or five people useing your connection, but fails rappidly when you look at it from the perspective of a large bank or multinational corporation.
From what I understand, this working group is attempting to lay out the protocols necessary to allow gateways between IM services to exist. Theory being that you could use your Yahoo IM client to talk to your cousin using an AIM client, who is talking to his buddy over in the MSN world. Asside from the same level of requirement to know what service the remote user is on.
At the moment, with variations on the theme such as jabber, you have to have an account on the remote system even if you are only establishing a connection to a jabber server.
Then again, I could be wrong. Perhaps this will only help wireless users.
-Rusty
Re:Admirable, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it's inevidable. I remember a time when companies were building proprietary networks systems for corporate use. I remember when AOL wouldn't let people send/receive e-mail from internet. What forced them to change was University use. Researchers don't care about ease of use. They see computers like a hammer, just a tool. They set up e-mail systems and web servers. I remeber compiling Linux onto a 383 long before many of you even knew what e-mail was. Instant Messaging is next.
My boss want to do IM, to keep in more direct touch with associates. He doesn't understand why noone sets up their own servers. So we set up our own right next to our e-mail system (so that e-mail and jabber ids are the same). This is one of the first of MANY coming jabber servers. After a point, every incoming freshman is going to not only get e-mail/web hosting but also a jabber id.
Like the early days of email (Score:5, Interesting)
Today there are a bunch of competing networks -- AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! and, to a lesser extent, Groove -- none of which interoperate at the protocol level. There is no infrastructure counterpart to SMTP, RFC-822, MIME etc.
XMPP, aka Jabber, is the IM counterpart to SMTP, conceptually -- it's a unified protocol that IM software needs to standardize on -- as well as technologically: it's an asynchronous, routed, queuing messaging protocol. XMPP leverages RFC-822 for addressing, MIME and HTML for content, and further refines the SMTP idea by adding an extensible syntax (XML with namespaces), presence, persistent connections, deferral metadata, named services, group chat, file transfer etc.
To say that XMPP exists for interoperability is like saying HTTP exists for interoperability. XMPP isn't really the glue that could tie proprietary IM networks together, although it certainly does that, too.
Not incidentally, to get started with Jabber, pick up the best Jabber client for Linux/Windows/MacOS X [sourceforge.net] and register with one of the free public Jabber servers [jabber.org]. The account setup takes about 10 seconds and is done through the program.
Interoperability. (Score:3, Interesting)
And does this whole setup mean that I can run my own IM host? As in, I can be BadAssBob@bobshost.com? No external service necessary? I can IM WimpAssFred@wimpybox.com just like that, no centralized server necessary? Just like email?
Oh... oh my pants!
--grendel drago