Contents:

• Overview
• Principal URIs
• General: Articles, Papers, News, Reports

[June 2007] Jabber Software Foundation (became XMPP Standards Foundation in January 2007) was founded in 2001 as an open forum for definition and extension of the streaming XML technologies that grew out of the open-source Jabber project started by Jeremie Miller in 1999. Since the beginning, the organization has focused on defining open protocols rather developing open-source software. In 2002, the JSF contributed the core Jabber protocols to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) under the name Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). Meanwhile, the JSF has continued to lead the Jabber/XMPP developer community through publication of XMPP extensions, hosting of interoperability testing events, and deployment of a certification authority for XMPP servers... The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) builds open protocols for presence, instant messaging, and real-time communication and collaboration on top of the IETF's Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), and also provides information and infrastructure to the worldwide community of Jabber/XMPP developers, service providers, and end users. Widely considered the lingua franca of instant messaging, XMPP is an Internet standard for presence, real-time messaging, and streaming Extensible Markup Language (XML) data that grew out of the popular Jabber open-source technologies first released in 1999. With approval of XMPP by the IETF in 2004, the XSF continues to develop XMPP extensions that meet the needs of its many stakeholders: open-source and commercial developers (including Apple, HP, Nokia, and Sun), organizations large and small (including the U.S. defense establishment and most Wall Street investment banks), Internet and mobile service providers (including Google, NTT, and Portugal Telecom), and an estimated 40-50 million end users worldwide..."

Jabber is an open, secure, ad-free alternative to consumer IM services like AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo. Under the hood, Jabber is a set of streaming XML protocols and technologies that enable any two entities on the Internet to exchange messages, presence, and other structured information in close to real time.

[September 21, 2000] Jabber: 'open source XML-based instant messaging.' "Essentially, Jabber defines an abstraction layer utilizing XML to encode the common essential data types. This abstraction layer is managed by an intelligent server which routes data between the client APIs and the backend services that translate data from remote networks or protocols. By using this compatible abstraction layer, Jabber can provide many aspects of an Instant Messaging (IM) and/or Presence service in a simplified and uniform way. At the core, Jabber is an API to provide instant messaging and presence functionality independent of data exchanged between entities. The primary use of Jabber is to give existing applications instant connectivity through messaging and presence features, contact list capabilities, and back-end services that transparently enrich the available functionality."

"XML is used in Jabber to define the common basic data types: message and presence. Essentially, XML is the core enabling technology within the abstraction layer, providing a common language with which everything can communicate. XML allows for painless growth and expansion of the basic data types and almost infinite customization and extensibility anywhere within the data. Many solutions already exist for handling and parsing XML, and the XML Industry has invested significant time in understanding the technology and ensuring full internationalization. XML Namespaces are used within all Jabber XML to create strict boundaries of data ownership. The basic function of namespaces is to separate different vocabularies of XML elements that are structurally mixed together. By ensuring that Jabber's XML is namespace-aware, it allows any XML defined by anyone to be structurally mixed with any data element within the protocol. This feature is relied upon frequently within the protocol to separate the XML that is processed by different components."

The Jabber Project: Statement on IETF Activity: "Jabber is an open development project and is commited to fully support any open real-time messaging protocols, including the IETF recommended protocol. When such protocol is available, users of Jabber software and services will automatically be allowed to communicate with users of the IETF protocol. As support for the IETF efforts grows, Jabber is aiming to create a leading open-source platform around its IETF support. The IMPP Working Group is currently entering the design phase for its protocol. Developers of the Jabber Project have been following the creation of the existing requirements draft closely, and expect to participate in the development of the protocol within the IMPP group. Based on the requirements draft, the protocol already used internally to Jabber is an existing possible candidate for the recommended protocol. As the IETF activity in designing the protocol continues, Jabber will be aligned as closely as possible to the discussions and requirements, and lobbied as a test platform for IMPP development efforts."

On XML (Instant) Messaging, see [1] Common Profile for Instant Messaging (CPIM); [2] Jabber XML Protocol; [3] WAP Wireless Markup Language Specification; [4] MessageML; [5] XML Messaging Specification (XMSG); [6] Wireless Village Initiative.

Principal URIs

• Jabber.org Web site Jabber Software Foundation. In January 2007, the corporation announced a change of name to the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF).
• XMPP Standards Foundation
• Jabber.com - Business support for Jabber
• Jabber, Inc. FAQ document "Jabber, Inc. develops and markets flexible, extensible, scalable, and secure presence-powered, real-time messaging solutions, including enterprise instant messaging (EIM) software for the enterprise, government, communications / service providers, and financial services markets. Its flagship products, the Jabber Extensible Communications Platform. Jabber XCP and JabberNow, are based on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)-approved Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)."
• Jabber: User FAQ document
• Jabber User Guide
• Jabber Software Clients "There are literally hundreds of Jabber clients."
• Wikipedia: list of Jabber client software
• Jabber mailing lists
• Jabber Wiki
• See also: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)

General: Articles, Papers, News, Reports

• [October 4, 2004] "IETF Publishes XMPP RFCs Core Jabber Protocols Recognized As Internet-Grade Technologies." - "The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) today officially published the specifications for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) as RFCs within the Internet Standards Process. These documents, which formalize the XML streaming protocols first developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999, are the result of two years of work by the IETF's Extensible Messaging and Presence Working Group and represent the state of the art in open instant messaging (IM) and presence technologies. The specifications published today are as follows: (1) RFC 3920: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core — The core XML streaming technology that powers Jabber applications, including advanced security and internationalization support. (2) RFC 3921: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence — Basic IM and presence extensions, including contact lists, presence subscriptions, and whitelisting/blacklisting. (3) RFC 3922: Mapping the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) to Common Presence and Instant Messaging (CPIM) — A mapping of XMPP to the IETF's abstract syntax for IM and presence. (4) RFC 3923: End-to-End Signing and Object Encryption for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) — An extension for interoperable, end-to-end security... "Combined with XMPP development and integration by the likes of Apple, HP, Oracle, and Sun, publication of these RFCs is yet another vote of confidence in the power of Jabber technologies," said Peter Saint-Andre, Executive Director of the Jabber Software Foundation and editor of the XMPP specifications. "We now have a stable, secure foundation for developing a wide range of presence and messaging applications and for building out the real-time Internet." In contributing XMPP to the Internet Standards Process, the JSF ceded change control over its core technologies to the IETF. Now that the protocols have passed through the IETF's rigorous cross-area and security review, attention turns to the enormous base of Jabber servers, clients, and code libraries, which are currently being upgraded to comply with the XMPP specifications. In addition, the JSF continues to develop many popular XMPP extensions through its JEP series, covering everything from advanced IM and extended presence, to real-time content syndication, to bindings for SOAP and other application protocols..." See: (1) "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)"; (2) "Jabber XML Protocol."

• [September 22, 2004] "Jabber Readying IM Appliance for SMBs." By Ryan Naraine. From InternetNews.com (September 22, 2004). "Instant messaging software firm Jabber Inc. has announced plans to release a plug-and-play IM appliance designed for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The new appliance is scheduled to ship in the first quarter of next year and will run on the Jabber Extensible Communications Platform (Jabber XCP). Jabber, which is working on an XMPP-to-SIP Gateway to achieve interoperability with IBM's Lotus IM product, said the release of an SMB instant messaging appliance will coincide with a new version of the Jabber XCP Platform and an upgraded Jabber Messenger desktop client. Jabber XCP is a presence, messaging and XML routing infrastructure that is used to create real-time applications, systems and services. Enterprise customers use Jabber XCP to presence-enable real-time application like workflow systems, transactional financial trading systems, alert and notification systems and customer service portals... It will also support Web Services to embed presence and messaging into other applications using SOAP-based APIs and a Presence Mirror to allow access to users' availability information via a database connection. Jabber said the product suite will also include wireless instant messaging clients for RIM (BlackBerry), PocketPC, SmartPhone, J2ME, Symbian, SMS and WAP..."

• [December 24, 2003] "Jabber XCP Generates Corporate IM." By Michael Caton. In eWEEK (December 16, 2003). "Jabber Inc.'s Jabber Extensible Communications Platform has a lot under the covers that brings IM beyond user-to-user communications. Unfortunately, Jabber XCP lacks the graphical management tools found in competing products. Jabber XCP 2.7 is available now, priced at $30 per user. In eWEEK Labs' tests, we found a good deal to like in the way Jabber XCP and its included Jabber Messenger work together to deliver instant messaging, but the lack of a management console is a troubling shortcoming of the platform. In terms of base price, Jabber XCP is competitive with Microsoft Corp.'s Live Communications Server 2003. It costs much less than IBM's Lotus Sametime 3.1 but doesn't offer Sametime's Web conferencing features. Jabber Inc. originated out of the Jabber Open Source Project, when Webb Interactive Services Inc. created a software company around the core developers of the original open-source Jabber server. Open-source versions of products that leverage XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), the XML-based Jabber communications protocol, are available through the Jabber Software Foundation at www.jabber.org. The JSF manages the standardization process for adding extensions to XMPP for backward compatibility. The Jabber XCP product differs from the open-source Jabberd server in that it is a multithreaded and modular application. Jabber offers an interesting wrinkle on IM As a framework application, Jabber XCP offers companies a flexible platform for delivering IM- and presence-aware applications. Overall, we liked the IM experience Jabber XCP provides, including its default options for indicating presence, which are broader than those in competing enterprise IM clients, and its ability to customize the Jabber IM client... Because Jabber XCP relies heavily on XML as the core to communications, seeing how the product works and making modifications can be relatively straightforward. For example, customizing the client's look and feel essentially involves making changes to three XML files..."

• [August 12, 2003] "Instant logging: Harness the Power of log4j with Jabber. Learn How to Extend the log4j Framework with Your Own Appenders." By Ruth Zamorano and Rafael Luque (Orange Soft). From IBM developerWorks, Java technology. August 12, 2003. With source code. ['Not only is logging an important element in development and testing cycles -- providing crucial debugging information -- it is also useful for detecting bugs once a system has been deployed in a production environment, providing precise context information to fix them. In this article, Ruth Zamorano and Rafael Luque, cofounders of Orange Soft, a Spain-based software company specializing in object-oriented technologies, server-side Java platform, and Web content accessibility, explain how to use the extension ability of log4j to enable your distributed Java applications to be monitored by instant messaging (IM)'] "The log4j framework is the de facto logging framework written in the Java language. As part of the Jakarta project, it is distributed under the Apache Software License, a popular open source license certified by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The log4j environment is fully configurable programmatically or through configuration files, either in properties or XML format. In addition, it allows developers to filter out logging requests selectively without modifying the source code. The log4j environment has three main components: (1) loggers control which logging statements are enabled or disabled. Loggers may be assigned the levels 'ALL, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, or OFF'. To make a logging request, you invoke one of the printing methods of a logger instance. (2) layouts format the logging request according to the user's wishes. (3) appenders send formatted output to its destinations... The log4j network appenders already provide mechanisms to monitor Java-distributed applications. However, several factors make IM a suitable technology for remote logging in real-time. In this article, we cover the basics of extending log4j with your custom appenders, and document the implementation of a basic IMAppender step by step. Many developers and system administrators can benefit from their use..."

• [June 02, 2003] "HP Turns to Jabber for Enterprise IM." By John K. Waters. In Application Development Trends (June 02, 2003). "Instant messaging (IM) is fast emerging as a useful and productivity-enhancing enterprise technology, and many businesses have begun to embrace it in a serious way. In fact, according to the Gartner Group, instant messaging is proving to be a real driver of enterprise communications as companies seek to integrate IM and so-called presence technologies into their enterprise applications. Gartner analyst Maurene Caplan Grey believes that vendor alliances in the IM space are fueling the current drive toward adoption of a common IM and presence protocol... One example of this trend can be seen in the alliance between industry heavyweight Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Jabber, a Denver-based IM and presence technology developer. The two companies announced last week that HP will resell a version of Jabber's enterprise instant-messaging framework that the two companies developed jointly for the HP-UX platform, as well as for Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers. According to the terms of the agreement, the two companies will sell the Jabber framework jointly on these platforms and on the existing Linux-based platform to HP's worldwide customer base beginning in Q2 of this year. Financial details of the agreement were not available at press time. The Jabber Communications Platform is an enterprise/carrier-grade IM and presence solution. ('Presence' refers to the ability of an application to tell when a user is online and available to receive a message.) The Jabber commercial product and its open-source counterpart, Jabber.org, are based on the eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). XMPP is an XML-based data-transport technology that its proponents contend is better suited to handling IM and presence than a signaling technology. XMPP can be extended across disparate applications and systems because of its XML base. XMPP is being developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)... XMPP's competitor, Session Initiation Protocol for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (Simple), is also under construction by the IETF. Simple is a set of extensions to the established SIP protocol that initiate, set up and manage a range of media sessions, including voice and video. Simple extensions define SIP signaling methods to handle the transport of data and presence. Microsoft has said that it prefers Simple largely because of its capacity to unify voice, video and data messaging. Jabber recently formed an alliance with another industry heavyweight, Intel. Under the terms of that agreement, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker will invest in Jabber and help the company to develop wireless products. Jabber plans to release an SMS Gateway for carriers and the enterprise in Q3 of this year..."

• [March 28, 2003] "A Corporate-Friendly Makeover for Open-Source IM." By Christopher Saunders. In Enterprise IM (March 27, 2003). "The open-source IM movement stands to gain from a new, graphical front-end for installing and configuring the JabberD server. Released by the not-for-profit Jabber Software Foundation this week, the JabberD Quickstart executable represents a big step for the open-source JabberD server, the most widely deployed open-source IM server. JabberD relies on the XML-based Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), supporters of which have been struggling to get traction in enterprises, amid heavily entrenched competition from the likes of IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Exchange, a host of startups, and the public IM networks -- who are busily promoting enterprise offerings of their own. One way in that the JSF hopes to appeal to corporations is by addressing a lingering limitation in the server distribution: JabberD had previously been configured and maintained only through a command-line interface and a hand-edited XML configuration file... Already, the Linux-based offering is seeing new interest from users. Less than a month old, the release has been downloaded about 3,500 times. It's difficult to know how many installations have resulted from the downloads, the group says, because they tend to be behind the corporate firewall. (A survey conducted earlier on the group's site, Jabber.org, found that about 30 percent of users had deployed JabberD in intranet settings.) In addition to the current Linux deployment, the group is also working on versions for other platforms. Despite the benefits of a front-end and the early signs of rapid adoption, the JSF acknowledges that other work needs to be done on JabberD before its open-source IM becomes truly palatable to corporate-types -- work that includes beefing up security features, documentation, and public IM gateways. "Security is in the works through our work with the IETF," Saint-Andre said, referring to the recent creation of an XMPP Working Group within the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet's leading standards body. "Jabber is pretty secure already, but we're beefing that up even more. Documentation is always a sore point, since so few people in the open-source community are interested in documentation. However, we have a major translation effort underway for documentation, so we will have our docs in many major languages soon'..."

• [November 10, 2002] "IETF Approves XMPP Working Group. Jabber-Based Open Instant Messaging and Presence Technology on Internet Standards Track." - The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) has announced "the approval of an XMPP Working Group within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the group that sets the technical standards for the Internet. The Working Group has been formed to adapt the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for use as an IETF instant messaging and presence technology. XMPP is the core protocol used in the popular Jabber open source and Jabber, Inc. commercial instant messaging systems and is the result of the collaborative efforts of a worldwide group of software architects, developers and companies that comprise the Jabber community. Managed and organized by the non-profit Jabber Software Foundation (www.jabber.org), XMPP is an open XML-based protocol for near real-time extensible messaging and presence. It has enjoyed widespread popularity and adoption and is currently deployed on thousands of servers across the Internet and used by millions of people worldwide. 'Progress and work towards a common, open IM standard on any front will benefit the entire emerging IM marketplace,' said Jabber founder Jeremie Miller, now a Jabber Software Foundation board member. 'Jabber.org has always been a collaborative project driven by those interested in creating open, interoperable IM technologies based on XML. For those protocols to have gained enough popularity and use to warrant a standards effort is a sign that openness and interoperability are still deeply valued attributes on the Internet.'... Interoperability has always been a core objective of the Jabber project. Prominent individuals within the Jabber community have been involved in the IETF standards process for the last three years. The formation of a dedicated working group provides an opportunity to include the broader Internet community in adapting XMPP to IETF established standards for security, internationalization and inter-domain message exchange... In a related effort, the Messaging and Presence Interoperability Consortium (MPIC) is considering the XMPP as a key interoperability technology. The MPIC initiative is being driven by a group of carriers and service providers to establish interoperability standards for instant messaging and presence. Frustrated with the lack of workable interoperability standards from instant messaging and presence providers, the group intends to embrace emerging open standards like XMPP and collaborate towards interoperability among their respective systems..."

• [November 04, 2002] IETF Charters Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) Working Group. A posting from Pete Resnick announces that IETF's Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) approved the charter for a new Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) Working Group. XMPP is "an open, XML-based protocol for near real-time extensible messaging and presence. It is the core protocol of the Jabber Instant Messaging and Presence technology which is currently deployed on thousands of servers across the Internet and is used by millions of people worldwide. The XMPP working group will adapt the XMPP for use as an IETF Instant Messaging and Presence technology." Three IETF Internet Drafts for XMPP will serve as a basis for the deliverables of the IETF working group: XMPP Core describes the core features XMPP which is used by the servers, clients, and other applications that comprise the Jabber network; XMPP Instant Messaging describes the specific extensions necessary to create a basic instant messaging and presence application; XMPP CPIM Mapping describes a mapping of XMPP to the IETF Common Presence and Instant Messaging specification. "The main focus of the Working Group will be on XML streams (including stream-level security and authentication), the core data elements (<message/>, <presence/>, and <iq/>), and the namespaces required to achieve basic instant messaging and presence." See "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)."

• [March 05, 2002] "Jabber." By Jeremie Miller, Peter Saint-Andre, and James Barry (Jabber Software Foundation). IETF Network Working Group, Internet-Draft. February 21, 2002; expires: August 22, 2002. Reference: 'draft-miller-jabber-00.' Abstract: "This informational document describes the Jabber protocols, a set of open, XML-based protocols developed over a number of years mainly to provide instant messaging and presence services. In addition, this document describes the known deficiencies of the Jabber protocols." From the introduction: "Jabber is a set of open, XML-based protocols for which there exist multiple implementations. These implementations have been used mainly to provide instant messaging and presence services that are currently deployed on thousands of domains worldwide and are accessed by millions of IM users daily. Because a standard description of the Jabber protocols is needed to describe this new traffic growing over the Internet, the current document defines the Jabber protocols as they exist today. In addition, this document describes the known deficiencies of the Jabber protocols; however, this document does not address those deficiencies, since they are being addressed through a variety of standards efforts... The standard transport mechanisms for XML-RPC, SOAP, and other forms of XML data interchange are HTTP and, to a lesser extent, SMTP; yet neither of these mechanisms provides knowledge about the availability of network endpoints, nor are they particularly optimized for the often asynchronous nature of data interchange, especially when such data comes in the form of relatively small payloads as opposed to the larger documents originally envisioned to be the main beneficiaries of XML. By contrast, the existing instant messaging (IM) services have developed fairly robust methods for routing small information payloads to presence-aware endpoints (having built text messaging systems that scale up to millions of concurrent users), but their data formats are unstructured and they have for the most part shunned the standard addressing schemes afforded by URIs and the DNS infrastructure. Given these considerations, the developers of the Jabber system saw the need for open protocols that would enable the exchange of structured information in an asynchronous, near-real-time manner between any two or more network endpoints, where each endpoint is addressable as a URI and is able to know about the presence and availability of other endpoints on the network. Such protocols, along with associated implementations, would not only provide an alternative (and in many cases more appropriate) transport mechanism for XML data interchange, but also would encourage the development of instant messaging systems that are consistent with Internet standards related to network addressing (URIs, DNS) and structured information (XML). The Jabber protocols provide just such functionality, since they support asynchronous XML-based messaging and the presence or availability of network endpoints..." [cache]

• Jabber. IETF Internet-Draft, Network Working Group. By Jeremie Miller. Reference: 'draft-miller-impp-jabber-00.txt'. June 15, 2000. 43 pages, 20 references. The memo "provides a comprehensive description of the Jabber architecture, design principles, and protocol. The Server acts as an intelligent abstraction layer, managing the authorized client connections and connections to other Servers and Transports. All of the XML data is routed to the appropriate entities, or handled directly via internal modules on behalf of an entity. Servers can also utilize their own protocol to provide access to their clients. Clients may directly connect to the Server and use the XML Protocol to take full advantage of the functionality available. A client may also be customized to only operate with one server, or use an alternate protocol to access a custom server. Clients of alternate IM Networks are also part of the Architecture, made accessable via a Transport to that IM Network. A Tranport is a special-purpose Server. The primary function of a Transport is to translate the Jabber XML protocol to the protocol of a third party IM Network as well as translate the return data back to XML. Transports may also function to provide access to additional back-end functionality such as a real-time alert system, device presence, pager delivery, language translation or other custom needs. . . The use of XML Namespaces allows any entity to insert any custom XML in an alternate namespace anywhere within the protocol. This flexibiliy is used frequently within clients and servers, and enables custom applications to utilize the access Jabber provides to instantly exchange structured data with each other. Because Jabber is an XML medium, many of the new XML data formats can be immediately deployed on top of Jabber. This includes vCard XML, SyncML, XML/EDI, VoiceXML, and many more. The server can also act as an XML repository. The Jabber Server supports this via the jabber:iq:private namespace, which can contain any other XML that is stored on the server for the client. This can be used to store client preferences, bookmarks, game states, address books, notes, and any other structured data." [cache]

• [October 23, 2002] "Jabber and webMethods Form Strategic Alliance. webMethods and Jabber Team to Provide Real-Time Information to Financial Services Companies Using webMethods' Market-Leading Integration Platform." - "Jabber, Inc., a leading software developer of enterprise instant messaging and presence-enabled communications, whose investors include Webb Interactive Services, Inc. and France Telecom, today [2002-10-23] announced a strategic partnership with webMethods, Inc., the leading provider of integration software. As part of the partnership agreement, the two companies will jointly market a straight-through processing (STP) solution that provides real-time event notification to financial services customers. The webMethods integration platform enables organizations to tie multiple applications together, providing seamless enterprise-wide integration of a company's business processes. The addition of Jabber's presence-enabled platform gives customers a real-time window into what is occurring across the enterprise's global infrastructure. 'Jabber's XML-based platform easily interfaces with the webMethods integration platform, allowing us to publish events passing through our integration platform, in real time, straight to the customer's desktop,' said Darren Oberst, Vice President and General Manager, Industries and Systems Integrators, webMethods, Inc. 'This is particularly beneficial for financial services customers for whom time is quite literally money.' The Jabber Communications Platform is a robust software platform for building extensible instant messaging and presence-enabled applications and services. Built around the XML-based Jabber open protocol, the platform delivers an engine on which service providers, enterprises, and software developers create custom IM, alert and notification tools, and other collaborative solutions. It is designed to provide a secure and private solution for either internal or external communications and is easily set up as a wireless gateway to enable real-time communications to mobile devices..."

• [August 30, 2002] "Out with AOL, in with Jabber." By Paul Festa. In CNET News.com (August 30, 2002). "When America Online closed its door on efforts to standardize instant messaging, a new one may have opened for Jabber. Jabber, the XML-based instant messaging application that interoperates with multiple IM services, is close to winning approval for its own dedicated working group within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a development that would elevate the technology from one of many competing IM also-rans to that of a potential industry standard. 'They're pushing for a working group,' said Ned Freed, the IETF's co-area director for applications and member of the group's decision-making Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). 'I suspect we will be approving it in the very near future.' ... The IETF-proposed standard for instant messaging that AOL abandoned is still in progress. Dubbed SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions), it is an instant-messaging application of the IETF's Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a technology with numerous applications apart from IM. SIMPLE proponents, however diminished in strength without AOL's backing, are putting up a fight to resist the Jabber invasion, arguing that the IETF's energies are divided enough as it is without adding another instant messaging protocol to the mix. In fact, there is a large handful of IM-related activities, variously competing and complementary with each other, in progress under the IETF's auspices. In addition to SIMPLE, they include Application Exchange (APEX), a still-ongoing project that even its working group chair acknowledges is unlikely to prosper; the now moribund Presence and Instant Messaging Protocol (PRIM), which backers hope to revive in the future; and the Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol (IMPP), a group working on Common Presence and Instant Messaging (CPIM)... Jabber proponents argue that an XML-based protocol would find a warm reception on the Internet, where the number of XML-based documents and applications is burgeoning. And should the IETF approve a Jabber working group, it would start out with an installed base that no other IETF instant messaging activity can match. Jabber now claims that 'as many as 100,000 of its servers are running across the Internet, with millions of people using the application. Licensees of Jabber's enterprise-grade software include AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Walt Disney, BellSouth, France Telecom and VA Linux Systems...Jabber -- which exists as both the for-profit Jabber.com and the open-source development group 'The Jabber Software Foundation' -- has much to gain from the potential IETF working group. In addition to the prestige and possible surge in adoption that IETF recognition would bring, Jabber backers are hoping that in exchange for ceding control of the technology to the IETF, they might get valuable technical help in areas where Jabber badly needs it -- namely security and internationalization..."

• [July 26, 2002] "Jabber away with instant messaging. Add open source, XML-based instant messaging to your Java applications." By Jason Kitchen. In Java World (July 26, 2002). ['Jabber is an open, XML-based data model and protocol for instant messaging. Coupled with the ever-increasing number of Jabber-based open source and commercial products, this protocol provides a way to break out of proprietary instant messaging services. Various open source Java APIs can help you build Jabber-based services and integrate instant messaging into your application.'] "Jabber is an open protocol for instant messaging and presence services. A primary candidate for a common protocol, Jabber has the potential to break the proprietary grip on instant messaging services. This article will explain how to programmatically send simple Jabber messages and develop a simple notification service based upon open standards and open source APIs and products. The Jabber standards and architecture help create a distributed IM system, reminiscent of the email systems distributed across the Internet, with users connecting to these systems locally. This approach is diametrically opposed to the monolithic system architecture provided by such current service providers as AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), ICQ, MSN (Microsoft Network), and Yahoo, where a single central server or group of centralized servers provide the messaging service. Jabber also resembles the email architecture in other ways: Jabber addresses its end-points (humans, machines, software) with an addressing scheme almost identical to the basic SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) scheme. For example, myname@elogex.com is a valid Jabber address, or JID (Jabber ID) in Jabber parlance. For these reasons, Jabber-based systems scale better than existing proprietary systems. Additionally, the protocol allows for gateways to proprietary instant messaging services, should that become necessary..."

• [June 06, 2002] "Comparative Jabber Book Review. A Look At Three Titles On the Protocol." By John Zukowski (President, JZ Ventures, Inc.). From IBM developerWorks, XML zone. June 2002. ['Jabber is an open, XML-based protocol you can use to add instant messaging to your applications. If you're interested in learning about Jabber but aren't quite sure where to begin, here's a review of three books on the subject to help you get off to the right start.'] "Instant messengers (IMs) such as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), ICQ, MSN Messenger, or Yahoo! Messenger require access to vendor-specific servers to facilitate communications between multiple users. While some vendors allow you to add their instant messaging capabilities to your applications, you're still stuck with using their servers and access control. If you want to include instant messaging in your own applications but still maintain control -- such as in a corporate intranet or even over the Internet -- Jabber might be for you. Jabber is an open, XML-based protocol for instant messaging and presence. In this article, I'll look at three books available as of May, 2002, that will help you to understand what Jabber is and how to develop applications using the Jabber protocol. In alphabetical order, the books reviewed are: Instant Messaging in Java, by Iain Shigeoka (Manning, 2002); Jabber Programming, by Stephen Lee and Terence Smelser (M&T Books, 2002); Programming Jabber, by D.J. Adams (O'Reilly, 2002)..."

• [May 31, 2002] "Jabber: Instant Messaging For E-Business." By Gerhard Poul (Freelance writer). From IBM developerWorks. May 2002. ['In this article, Gerhard Poul shows how XML-based Jabber fits into today's e-business infrastructure, lighting instant messaging in a whole new way. You'll see that you can use Jabber to integrate your existing e-business into a more dynamic and personal environment. Your e-business site will be able to communicate with its users faster and integrate itself into their lives -- and you'll have fun learning and playing with what Jabber offers.'] "Fun is very important here, so I'm going to show you one way of integrating Jabber instant messaging into a state-of-the-art e-business environment, and at the same time share some insights that will leave you ready to play with Jabber yourself after you finish reading this article. Jabber, if you're not familiar with it, is an open, XML-based protocol for instant messaging and presence, supported by the non-profit Jabber Software Foundation. I'll outline its most basic characteristics, but the focus here is less on the architecture, and more on getting familiar with Jabber in order to get the most out of it in your application... Advantages of using Jabber: (1) The published protocol is implemented in free software. (2) You can reach users in all instant messaging systems by using Jabber's instant messaging gateway modules. You only have to program to one interface and Jabber takes care of the distribution throughout all major messaging systems. (3) Jabber is resource-aware. The same user can connect to Jabber with multiple clients and messages will be routed accordingly..."

• [April 28, 2001] "Foundation to promote Jabber IM." By Peter Galli. In eWEEK (April 26, 2001). "Jabber.com and the Jabber open-source project have joined forces to establish the Jabber Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that will work toward developing a Jabber-based open-source Instant Messaging and Presence standard. Jabber is an instant messaging system focused on privacy, security, ease of use and access from anywhere using any device. It is based on XML and is backed by a community of open-source developers who are building a set of common technologies for further development, including an open-source server, clients, libraries and transports. Andre Durand, a founder of Denver-based Jabber.com, said the foundation was necessary to breach the divide between the proprietary Jabber.com on the one hand and the open-source community on the other. It will be modeled on other open-source bodies such as the Apache Software Foundation and the Gnome Foundation. . . The foundation, which is in the process of being legally established, will also approach major corporations standing behind the Jabber technology to join the foundation as members, advisers and board members. A source working on establishing the foundation who requested anonymity said companies of the stature of France Telecom, Bell South, AT&T Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and WorldCom, among others, are being invited to join. . . While the specifics of the foundation are still being finalized, it's expected that an initial or annual membership fee of about $5,000 will be required and that a five-member board of directors and an advisory board will be formed." Details in the announcement.

• [February 05, 2001] "Jabber: Smooth Talking for Short Messages. Neither SMS nor instant messaging can easily implement real-time, immediate, cross-enterprise communication. Can XML surmount this tower of babel? [PRESENTATION.]" By Jeff Jurvis (Rainier Technology, Inc). In XML Magazine Volume 2, Number 1 (February/March 2001). ['Although short messaging services and instant messaging are available on mobile and other devices, neither technology is perfect for implementing real-time, cross-enterprise communication. Columnist Jeff Jurvis discusses how XML could give you a fast-talking solution.'] "Short messaging services (SMS) on mobile phones and pagers are wildly popular in Europe and Japan, but have had little impact on North American users of mobile devices. This is due in part to the wireless communications infrastructures in Japan and Europe, which have been supporting reliable and fast SMS for a few years. The problem in the United States is the usual one: incompatible carrier infrastructure and a lack of interoperability standards make any attempt at a short messaging service insufficient. Is short messaging doomed to fail in North America? Not if you consider the close relative of SMS, instant messaging (IM). IM is huge on services like America Online and the Microsoft Network. The usage patterns are very similar -- IM and SMS messages are usually shorter than 100 characters with no attachments or other need for persistence. Both services are available on mobile devices, and software for both can be integrated into enterprise messaging strategies... The good folks of the Jabber Project in the open source community are building royalty-free, noncommercial, distributed instant messaging software that uses XML to connect IM users. Unlike AOL IM or any of the other proprietary services, Jabber does not require messages to run through a central server controlled by someone outside your company. You host the Jabber server and have greater control over security and availability. The Jabber architecture is distributed, very much like Internet e-mail. Each Jabber server is independent, but can talk to any other Jabber server on the Internet. Jabber clients use simple TCP sockets to exchange XML documents with Jabber servers. The Jabber server listens for client connections and provides message delivery, message storage (store and forward), buddy list storage, and user authentication. Developers can add components called transports to the Jabber server that serve as gateways to other IM services such as AOL IM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, IRC, and even e-mail and telnet. Whether or not a message is intended for another Jabber client or a foreign client such as AOL, the communication always conforms to the Jabber XML specifications. The XML Hook The three main XML elements in the Jabber architecture are iq (info/query), message, and presence. Info/query is used to authenticate users, manage rosters (buddy lists), get time and version information, and for other general queries. For example, in this info/query, this Jabber XML code is sent by a client to authenticate a user... Jabber is a simple, protocol-agnostic framework for routing XML-based instant messages to any device that can access a TCP socket -- everything from the smallest Web-enabled cell phone to desktop and server computers. Even more intriguing, there is nothing about Jabber that makes it stop with IM. The Jabber Project has experimented with transporting SOAP calls and other XML namespaces over the architecture."

• [January 18, 2001] "Jabber And XML Messaging. The Endgame Is 'An All-Pervasive Message Plasma'." By Jon Udell. In Byte (January 15, 2001). "In my October 2 [2000] column, on computer telephony, instant messaging (IM), and metadata, I included some newsgroup discussion about Jabber, an open source IM gateway and messaging platform that's really gaining a lot of traction lately. What was clear in that discussion is that IM's innovation is as much cultural as technological... [Mark Wilcox said:] "What sets IM apart, for the user, is the concept of presence, which we've just started to touch upon. Presence is useful to learn things like 'Jon is online, but is busy.' But it could be modified with filters to say 'But I'm available to chat with anyone on the O'Reilly e-mail book team.' This should even be doable with current Jabber filters and presence. Filtering technology needs to improve dramatically. I just don't think people grasp the concept of e-mail folders, or else the technology is too hard to use. In any case, people do want to filter their messages (whether e-mail or IM) more efficiently and naturally. Software should be smarter. For example, it should realize that I read all e-mail from Jon Udell more quickly than I do the latest message from HR. Thus, it could bubble all of Jon's messages to the top." Indeed. And this smarter messaging client should watch and then offer to emulate my filing habits. As an independent consultant working on a variety of projects for different clients, I spend a lot of time organizing both inbound and outbound messages by project and topic. Yet, often this effort falls just below the threshold at which I'll create/maintain a filter. Communication is often just too fast and free flowing. Why, in the year 2001, don't we yet have messaging software that sees patterns in our communication behavior and asks (politely) if we'd like to do something about them? The answer is simple: our software doesn't let us express those patterns, easily and naturally, as we communicate. Even here in the future, there's no free lunch. The smart client that we all dream of can't make something out of nothing. It needs some hints -- metadata hooks that it can use to understand and work intelligently with the 'five Ws' (who, what, when, where, why) of electronic communication. E-mail messaging deals with some of this, but it lacks the ability to represent such routine, yet complex, scenarios... I've just about given up hoping that e-mail infrastructure is going to suddenly, one of these days, wake up and 'get it.' Instead, I think the solution will arrive in the context of an entirely new messaging infrastructure. And the leading example of that is Jabber.In my groupware book, I focused heavily on the problem of Web/e-mail integration because e-mail is 'where we live.' It's the application in which we spend much of our time, and through which we express much of our communication. But e-mail's absolute dominance is threatened. For the generation now entering the work world, IM is as central as e-mail and in some cases more so. Given this dynamic, Jabber is ideally positioned for the kind of viral play that got the first generation of browsers adopted so quickly and so fast. The Jabber server, through gateways, unites disparate IM realms, so that a Jabber user can chat with AIM or ICQ users as easily as with users of Jabber's native IM. HotJabber.com is one of the places where you can go to download a Jabber client, and join in this fun. Add up the millions of users of the various IM services that Jabber can connect, and you can see it has the potential to get really big, really fast. Mind you, the prospect of chatting up AIM and ICQ users doesn't excite me in the least. But here's what does: Jabber, if it succeeds in becoming pervasive, will lay the foundation for messaging applications that I yearn for in the worst way. A smoother interface between the message-based and interactive components of an app like Request Tracker would be of huge significance to me, to anybody involved with software development, and indeed to anybody involved in project management of any kind. Another example: imagine applying Jabber's back-end plug-in component architecture, and its XML messaging, to the problem of group calendars..."

• [January 18, 2001] "Jabber And XML Messaging The Endgame Is 'An All-Pervasive Message Plasma'." By Jon Udell. In Byte (January 15, 2001). "In my October 2 [2000] column, on computer telephony, instant messaging (IM), and metadata, I included some newsgroup discussion about Jabber, an open source IM gateway and messaging platform that's really gaining a lot of traction lately. What was clear in that discussion is that IM's innovation is as much cultural as technological... What sets IM apart, for the user, is the concept of presence, which we've just started to touch upon. Presence is useful to learn things like 'Jon is online, but is busy.' But it could be modified with filters to say 'But I'm available to chat with anyone on the O'Reilly e-mail book team.' This should even be doable with current Jabber filters and presence. Filtering technology needs to improve dramatically. I just don't think people grasp the concept of e-mail folders, or else the technology is too hard to use. In any case, people do want to filter their messages (whether e-mail or IM) more efficiently and naturally. Software should be smarter. For example, it should realize that I read all e-mail from Jon Udell more quickly than I do the latest message from HR. Thus, it could bubble all of Jon's messages to the top. Indeed. And this smarter messaging client should watch and then offer to emulate my filing habits. As an independent consultant working on a variety of projects for different clients, I spend a lot of time organizing both inbound and outbound messages by project and topic. Yet, often this effort falls just below the threshold at which I'll create/maintain a filter. Communication is often just too fast and free flowing. Why, in the year 2001, don't we yet have messaging software that sees patterns in our communication behavior and asks (politely) if we'd like to do something about them? The answer is simple: our software doesn't let us express those patterns, easily and naturally, as we communicate. Even here in the future, there's no free lunch. The smart client that we all dream of can't make something out of nothing. It needs some hints -- metadata hooks that it can use to understand and work intelligently with the 'five Ws' (who, what, when, where, why) of electronic communication. E-mail messaging deals with some of this, but it lacks the ability to represent such routine, yet complex, scenarios... I've just about given up hoping that e-mail infrastructure is going to suddenly, one of these days, wake up and 'get it.' Instead, I think the solution will arrive in the context of an entirely new messaging infrastructure. And the leading example of that is Jabber.In my groupware book, I focused heavily on the problem of Web/e-mail integration because e-mail is 'where we live.' It's the application in which we spend much of our time, and through which we express much of our communication. But e-mail's absolute dominance is threatened. For the generation now entering the work world, IM is as central as e-mail and in some cases more so. Given this dynamic, Jabber is ideally positioned for the kind of viral play that got the first generation of browsers adopted so quickly and so fast. The Jabber server, through gateways, unites disparate IM realms, so that a Jabber user can chat with AIM or ICQ users as easily as with users of Jabber's native IM. HotJabber.com is one of the places where you can go to download a Jabber client, and join in this fun. Add up the millions of users of the various IM services that Jabber can connect, and you can see it has the potential to get really big, really fast. Mind you, the prospect of chatting up AIM and ICQ users doesn't excite me in the least. But here's what does: Jabber, if it succeeds in becoming pervasive, will lay the foundation for messaging applications that I yearn for in the worst way. A smoother interface between the message-based and interactive components of an app like Request Tracker would be of huge significance to me, to anybody involved with software development, and indeed to anybody involved in project management of any kind. Another example: imagine applying Jabber's back-end plug-in component architecture, and its XML messaging, to the problem of group calendars..."

• [January 18, 2001] "Jabber And XML Messaging The Endgame Is 'An All-Pervasive Message Plasma'." By Jon Udell. In (January 15, 2001). "In my October 2 [2000] column, on computer telephony, instant messaging (IM), and metadata, I included some newsgroup discussion about Jabber, an open source IM gateway and messaging platform that's really gaining a lot of traction lately. What was clear in that discussion is that IM's innovation is as much cultural as technological... What sets IM apart, for the user, is the concept of presence, which we've just started to touch upon. Presence is useful to learn things like "Jon is online, but is busy." But it could be modified with filters to say "But I'm available to chat with anyone on the O'Reilly e-mail book team." This should even be doable with current Jabber filters and presence. Filtering technology needs to improve dramatically. I just don't think people grasp the concept of e-mail folders, or else the technology is too hard to use. In any case, people do want to filter their messages (whether e-mail or IM) more efficiently and naturally. Software should be smarter. For example, it should realize that I read all e-mail from Jon Udell more quickly than I do the latest message from HR. Thus, it could bubble all of Jon's messages to the top. Indeed. And this smarter messaging client should watch and then offer to emulate my filing habits. As an independent consultant working on a variety of projects for different clients, I spend a lot of time organizing both inbound and outbound messages by project and topic. Yet, often this effort falls just below the threshold at which I'll create/maintain a filter. Communication is often just too fast and free flowing. Why, in the year 2001, don't we yet have messaging software that sees patterns in our communication behavior and asks (politely) if we'd like to do something about them? The answer is simple: our software doesn't let us express those patterns, easily and naturally, as we communicate. Even here in the future, there's no free lunch. The smart client that we all dream of can't make something out of nothing. It needs some hints -- metadata hooks that it can use to understand and work intelligently with the "five Ws" (who, what, when, where, why) of electronic communication. E-mail messaging deals with some of this, but it lacks the ability to represent such routine, yet complex, scenarios... I've just about given up hoping that e-mail infrastructure is going to suddenly, one of these days, wake up and "get it." Instead, I think the solution will arrive in the context of an entirely new messaging infrastructure. And the leading example of that is Jabber.In my groupware book, I focused heavily on the problem of Web/e-mail integration because e-mail is "where we live." It's the application in which we spend much of our time, and through which we express much of our communication. But e-mail's absolute dominance is threatened. For the generation now entering the work world, IM is as central as e-mail and in some cases more so. Given this dynamic, Jabber is ideally positioned for the kind of viral play that got the first generation of browsers adopted so quickly and so fast. The Jabber server, through gateways, unites disparate IM realms, so that a Jabber user can chat with AIM or ICQ users as easily as with users of Jabber's native IM. HotJabber.com is one of the places where you can go to download a Jabber client, and join in this fun. Add up the millions of users of the various IM services that Jabber can connect, and you can see it has the potential to get really big, really fast. Mind you, the prospect of chatting up AIM and ICQ users doesn't excite me in the least. But here's what does: Jabber, if it succeeds in becoming pervasive, will lay the foundation for messaging applications that I yearn for in the worst way. A smoother interface between the message-based and interactive components of an app like Request Tracker would be of huge significance to me, to anybody involved with software development, and indeed to anybody involved in project management of any kind. Another example: imagine applying Jabber's back-end plug-in component architecture, and its XML messaging, to the problem of group calendars..."

• [September 21, 2000] "Jabber Surpasses 10,000 Instant Messaging Server Downloads And More Than 1,000 Instant Messaging Servers Deployed." - "Jabber, the only open source, extensible instant messaging platform, today surpassed 10,000 server downloads with more than 1,000 of these servers now actively deployed on the Internet. This marks a 100 percent increase in the number of downloaded servers in the last two months and an increase of more than ten times the number of servers in active deployment in the same period. Jabber is the only open source, XML-based platform for extensible instant messaging applications. Open source means the source code may be freely shared and improved upon. XML is an extensible markup language similar to HTML, the language used for producing most Web pages. Unlike HTML however, XML is much more structured, flexible and functional, allowing Web documents to be displayed and processed on a greater variety of Web browsers and Web-enabled devices such as handheld and palmtop computers. Jabber's open source platform delivers complete control to enterprises, while its' XML-based approach provides an ideal model for integrating and embedding Jabber into key customer service, commerce and exchange service applications. Jabber also provides interoperability with key messaging services through gateways which bridge Jabber to AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), ICQ, Yahoo and MSN (Microsoft Network) and through bridges to IRC chat and SMTP e-mail."

• Jabber Technical White Paper. By Catherine Dodson. April 25, 2000. "Jabber instant messaging software enables users to communicate in text-based conversations in real time. Instant messaging (IM) is expected to exceed the demand of email, and Jabber is positioned to offer the fastest, smartest, and most convenient tool for instant communications. Jabber's unique position in the market is a result of its XML-based architecture. Benefits of the XML architecture include: (1) It integrates easily into other programs and systems. (2) It provides more structure and intelligence than binary protocols. (3) It functions across platforms and operating systems. Jabber is a server-based program that runs on a system of distributed servers. Each user's roster and preferences are stored on the server. A user can log on from any client and access user preferences, subscription lists, and messages. In the current version of Jabber, users can communicate with AIM, ICQ, and Jabber servers. They can search for users on ICQ and Jabber servers. In the future, support for other instant messaging systems will be added. Jabber's server-based architecture enables major upgrades to take place without necessitating a redistribution of the client software... Jabber architecture is almost identical to that of email. Each user has a local server which receives information for them. The various local servers transfer the messages among themselves for delivery to users. Any number of servers can be supported, with each server representing a unique and separate "community" or domain. Jabber Identifiers are typically expressed identically to email: user@server.com. Jabber clients and servers connect through XML streams. Communications occur between clients and servers and between multiple servers. In client/server communications, the XML stream is always initiated by the client to the server. The architecture can support simple clients (e.g., a direct telnet connection). XML is an integral part of the architecture making it fundamentally extensible and able to express almost any structured data..." [cache]

• [October 04, 2000] "codebytes: jabber.org with Jeremie Miller." "Some observers believe that jabber, an open-source, XML-based, distributed messaging platform, will change the way applications communicate over the Internet. A chat with Jeremie Miller, jabber.org founder and lead developer, about jabber, the technology and the issues it addresses: jabber architecture... instant messaging, ICQ and AOL AIM... Microsoft .NET..." [2000-08-22] Audio/Video (Time: 50:00).

• [October 02, 2000] "The Next Bang: The Explosive Combination of Embedded Linux, XML and Instant Messaging." By Doc Searls (Senior Editor, Linux Journal). In Linux Journal (September 2000). "IM is a familiar concept to the tens of millions of AOL customers who use AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) or ICQ, which AOL also owns. Neither is open and deployable like Sendmail and Apache for the obvious reason that AOL owns the services and enjoys keeping them to itself - AOL's breed of IM is limited by its business model, which is all about selling captured eyeballs to advertisers... [So Jeremie Miller and] a cadre of developers quickly gathered around the project (Jabber.org) and built instant messaging that any geek can deploy in the familiar manner of Sendmail and Apache. Here is a description of Jabber's architecture, condensed from the Jabber Technical White Paper: (1) Every user interacts through a local server that transfers messages to and through any number of other servers, each with its own domain; (2) Jabber Identifiers are also expressed like email: yourname@domain.com; (3)Clients and servers converse among themselves through XML streams. In client/server conversations, the XML stream is always initiated by the client to the server; (4) The architecture can also support simple clients (e.g., a direct telnet connection) as well as AIM, ICQ and other proprietary clients; (5) Since it is built on XML, Jabber is extensible and able to express just about any kind of structured data; (6) Jabber's own protocol consists of XML fragments passed over XML streams between clients and servers. There are three primary protocols that define the basic types of XML fragments used in Jabber: Messages, Presence and Info/Query; (7) Server-to-server communication involves routing these protocol elements over an XML stream from one server to another (there are no special server-to-server protocols or features); (8) A Module API lets the server use external modules to handle message filtering, storage facilities (off-line messages, rosters, user info), user authentication and other functions; (9) A Service API allows integration of security, special connections for alternate clients and message logging; (10) Transport servers are used to bridge the Jabber protocol to other services, such as IRC, ICQ and AIM... XML is designed to carry 'structured' data. But that data can change constantly and--by design--define the terms by which it is understood. In essence, this creates a standards-based framework for dynamic relationships between communicating entities on the Net. When those communications become 'instant', there is nothing to stop relationships from being defined and changed whenever necessary. When communications become 'instant' (which in practical terms means near real-time), there is nothing to stop relationships from being defined and changed whenever necessary by agreement between the communicating parties, even if those parties are intelligent devices. With Jabber, any two identities, whether human or machine, can send and receive real-time messages that contain pretty much anything, and do so in a structured way, independent, if necessary, of intermediating protocols. Although Jabber was originally envisioned as a distributed, XML aware instant messaging platform, its uncomplicated methods of combining presence with XML document routing puts it in an ideal position to become much more than just another instant messaging system. Instead, it could become infrastructure for messaging enabled, embedded applications. It becomes the way they communicate through the Net -- whether with each other or with applications on the PC (which are already talking to each other). Jabber is an instant messaging platform with the ability to packetize messages in XML documents--in effect as data transport. Any PC or Net-native device can instantly communicate with all of the infrastructure on the Internet that can parse and act on XML. This puts new XML databases -- which are designed to parse XML and store structured data or documents--in a powerful context. Anywhere XML is the preferred way to receive and send information, we have infrastructure already conformed to instant messaging. . ."

• [October 03, 2000] "Jabber Works Both Sides of the .com, .org Street." By Michelle Head. In LinuxNews.com (October 02, 2000). ['Jabber works both sides of the .com, .org street Jabber.com, makers of the instant-messaging platform based on XML and the technology of its open source project (Jabber.org) has been riding the crest lately of a major growth spurt, announcing several business partnerships that should ensure that the company's expansion into new environments continues.'] "Jabber.com is an instant messaging (IM) platform based on XML and the technology of its open source project, Jabber.org. Of late, Jabber has been riding the crest of a major growth spurt, and has announced a number of business partnerships that should ensure that the company's expansion into new environments continues. [Comments from Andre Durand, founder of Jabber.com:] Jabber's appeal seems to be increasingly universal, Durand said. "We're the only open source movement in this space. There are Jabber clients running in every known [programming]language on every operating system (OS). As far as programming languages, we have C, C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, Java, Mozilla, PHP, Perl, Python, HTTP, every conceivable language. The server runs on Windows NT, Solaris, FreeBSD, every flavor of UNIX and every flavor of Linux," Durand said. This universality could send the IM system's popularity through the roof, Durand said. "It's the only platform based on XML. It's the only platform that's a distributed client server system that looks like e-mail. Everybody can run their own system--they all talk. It's just got the right ingredients to blow this space open." That simplicity and openness is enabling Jabber to partner easily with other companies, technologies and developers. "What we're doing with WorkSpot and IQ3G, is that we're all three funding the development of a Jabber client for the Palm. On top of that Jabber client library, we're going to do a simple instant messaging application as an example of how the client works. But then we're going to offer that client to every Palm developer that wants to send or receive XML to a Palm," Durand explained. "So really, Jabber is infrastructure for real-time XML messaging, and what we're doing is taking that XML messaging infrastructure to the Palm." "We're not per se building an instant messaging client for the Palm. That's less interesting to us," Durand continued. "We're taking the Jabber infrastructure to the Palm so a whole slew of new applications that have nothing to do with instant messaging but have everything to do with real-time XML can be delivered to the Palm." Jabber's appeal seems to be increasingly universal, Durand said. "We're the only open source movement in this space. There are Jabber clients running in every known [programming]language on every operating system (OS). As far as programming languages, we have C, C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, Java, Mozilla, PHP, Perl, Python, HTTP, every conceivable language. The server runs on Windows NT, Solaris, FreeBSD, every flavor of UNIX and every flavor of Linux," Durand said. Durand believes Jabber's appealingly simple focus will enable the IM platform to sidestep these roadblocks--and progress into new areas and partnerships. "We just make it easy to write embedded Jabber apps. At this stage, that's all it boils down to," he said. "Anybody who writes an embedded Linux application and has a need to move XML off that application to someplace else can use Jabber as the infrastructure to route that XML. That's how Jabber is a real-time XML messaging infrastructure platform. Instant Messaging doesn't have to be the application," Durand said, mentioning that other uses entail "device to device communication or device to device messaging, like the Palm."

Early references:

• Jabber IETF draft from jabber.org

• Appendix A. The Jabber Protocol DTD. See also the main Jabber protocol DTD on the Jabber.org web site.

• Appendix B. XML Streams DTD

• Jabber clients

• The Jabber Programmers' Guide

• Index of Jabber projects

• JDEV - Mailing list for Jabber