Jabber community, being the users of that server.īut Jabber, just as any other promising open technology on the internet, has seen a lot of development both in open source software as in commercially available software that extends its possibilities beyond plain and simple Instant Messaging. This also means that if one of these servers should fail, it affects only a small part of the And just as there are thousands if not millions of mail servers, these serversĬan all connect with one another to permit there respective users to communicate with each other. Jabber uses not one server (or cluster of servers) but literally thousands of servers. Indeed, even servers, as Jabber is a completely decentralized network. Using an open protocol means that everyone and their dog can choose to write a server, a client orĪ utility for the Jabber network. XMPP stands for eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol and is completely documentedĪs an internet standard, such as HTTP, the protocol we use to browse the net and SMTP, the protocol Jabber, using an open protocol called XMPP, has some clear advantages over the other, proprietary Such a network exists and it's called Jabber.Ī lot of questions can be raised, such as 'how can another network solve the problem of diversity?' and 'what makes this network better than the ones you mentioned before?'. Oddly enough, that better way might very well be yet another network, albeit one that is open, both in the sense that anyone is allowed to access it, no matter what client he's using, as well in the sense that one can see the complete specifications of how communications are initiated, how files can be transfered, etc. that don't happen to use ICQ, we all know there has to be a better way.
And while we see that a lot of these ICQ users also have an MSN account, just to be able to chat with those friends, colleagues, relatives. All living on perfectly separated islands. Today we can see the world is divided in those who use ICQ, those who use Yahoo!, those who use MSN, those who use AIM. Sadly enough, the world of instant messaging looks much more like world that was sketched above. Thanks to well defined open standards, we only need one client, one system to communicate with the world, while having the choice from at least ten clients, picking the one that we think suits our needs best. Luckily for us, email doesn't work like that. A world in which you need an email client to communicate with your brother, your sister in law and your best friend, another client to send emails to your colleagues and that old friend in Canada and a third client to stay in touch with your old schoolmates.