[Adium-devl] Bonjour Messaging Discussion

[Colin Barrett]

On May 16, 2007, at 6:38 PM, Evan Schoenberg wrote:

> On the other hand, we have someone who is working on the JEP (Peter  
> Saint-Andre) telling us that he is also working with the iChat team  
> to help ensure that future versions of iChat are compatible.  If  
> this is, in fact, the future, it makes more sense to work toward a  
> real standard versus a de facto one, knowing that the de facto is  
> one an evaporating target.  Adium does have a significant 'market  
> share' in the OS X world, particularly amongst those most likely to  
> make their opinions known to Apple.  I think we should come down, if  
> feasible, on the side of the standard.

I fully agree here. We should be aggressively pushing open standards  
for IM -- in this case, XMPP. Any pressure we can apply to the iChat  
folks to implement this open, standardized protocol is good.

Long term, having XMPP gain marketshare and move forward is a very  
important goal, for both us and Pidgin, as it allows us to extend and  
standardize the protocol for new features of our own, and keeps us  
from getting totally locked in to a single vendor. I don't think I  
need to explain the benefits of XMPP further to people on this list,  
but please: take a step back and realize that to win back the IM  
space, we need to apply pressure from all directions on all vendors to  
obey and use the standards process.

I work with web stuff all day and it's a similar battle to evangelize  
and tell people why using web standards is better.

Perhaps we need to send the iChat team a bunch of posters similar to  
this one ;) http://www.flickr.com/photos/amster/418602656/

-Colin