[Adium-devl] Bonjour Messaging Discussion

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Colin Barrett wrote:
> 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.

Colin, I couldn't have said it better myself, and I'm a hardcore 
protocol geek. ;-)

In the case of Bonjour presence / link-local messaging, I don't think we 
have an either-or decision here. If you look at the acknowledgements 
section of XEP-0174, you will see that I have worked closely with the 
people who defined this technology in the first place to get their 
feedback and input. They have been very helpful in providing information 
about how this stuff works. So this spec is really just documentation of 
existing practices, not some pie-in-the-sky "standard" dreamed up by a 
committee somewhere (the XSF is very developer-focused and I'm really 
just a glorified documentation guy). That said, I don't know exactly 
what features iChat 5 will support and even if I knew I wouldn't be able 
to tell you, but I do know that I have a good relationship with the 
iChat team and that they have continually expressed their commitment to 
standards-compliance and good interoperability with the rest of the XMPP 
network. So let's not assume that it's "interop with iChat" or "interop 
with everyone else" as some boolean choice here...

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
XMPP Standards Foundation
http://www.xmpp.org/xsf/people/stpeter.shtml

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