This is more of a philosophical discussion. It was very helpful to get a different point of view on things “open”.
Slides for this session can be found at: http://www.jabber.org/~stpeter/oscon2003/
There are standards for just about everything. There are large standards organizations (ISO, IETF, W3C, etc…).
What is a standard?
determined by markets, not standards organizations
Usually adhere to the “Principle of Good is Enough”, it solves at least 80% of the problem
Not always open (corporate control)
Not always friendly to open-source software
I’m going to run out of battery life soon. There don’t seem to be enough power outlets and power strips around.
There’s a guy with bright red hair that’s part of the Jabber.org group. It looks like he’s working on the source code of JabberD.
Today’s landscape
Operating system freedom is possible, but most endusers still live in Microsofts company town
doc editing is a suburb of the company town
filesharing is a gated community and the owners keep changing the locks
Email and the WWW are public parks bordering the company town (but servers are more free than clients)
Those nomadic coders mostly live free 🙂
Intant Messanging Land
company towns (Yahoo, Lotus Sametime, Odigo)
gate communities (AIM, ICQ, MSN)
Plutocracies (SMS, Wireless Village)
Public parks (SIP/SIMPLE, IRC)
Neighborhood (Jabber)
Brief history of Jabber
1998: jabberd server project (Jeremie Miller)
1999: base protocol defined, more OS projects
2000: first Jabber-related companies
2001: JSF founded, defines community standards process
2002: more protocol extensions, companies, and projects
2003: IETF’s XMPP WG adapts protocol
2004: world domination
Are Open Standards Enough?
The 3 legs of the stool:
1. Open Standards
2. Open Source
3. Open Community
The Jabber Community
Lots of open-source projects (see JabberStudio.org)
Commercial companies large and small
Community standards process — we control the protocol
Growing fast, many new applications and protocol extensions
Focusing on protocol means we have a mixed community — both open-source and commercial
More than just open-source — an open standard
Is this Utopia?
No, it’s a neighborhood
we have the usual squabbles
you may not like all your neighbors
……
Is this approach transferrable?
Jabber grew up in a fractured region (many proprietary systems, no standard)
Interoperability provided through gateways to legacy IM systems (still not native)
Patience required (4+ years of work in the Jabber community)
No assurance of success (competing protocols, large proprietary services)
What would it take to create open standards for document formats?
cooperations between people of different project or project to project communication.. Basically, people deciding on a foramt
focus on the format
serious benefits from freedom – new applications such as document sharing
References
The Samba Saga
Principle of Good is enough
Open Source vs. Open Standards (Jonathan Schwartz, Sun)
Open Source and Open Standards
Jabber Software Foundation
JabberStudio
Hey, Apple uses the Jabber protocol in Rendevous for “presense”.
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