I guess the question keeps boiling down to, is thisI think it is.. As matt matt put it; we're going to have to 'push' Jabber with a bottom-up approach.
a major JSF/jabber.org problem? Are we supposed to foster the end user
community and develop the protocol/system? I think that's just the tip
of the iceberg for my thoughts, so if you want some more, just ask.
Companies like MS/IBM are able to push SIP/SIMPLE/MSN/Whatever through everyone's throaths, inclusing network managers and managers. Jabber won't be able to do that, not without major backing from MS I'm > afraid.
So IMO; yes, there needs to be a good starting point for end-users. Of course it's great if this could be a complete site like icq.com (well, icq.com is horrible but you get the idea ;) but IMO it's already a good start if there is something like a quickstart guide. Another point are the clients. Most of them are created by hackers for hackers. They do great stuff have all the latest and greatest but they almost all lack end-user documentation and quite a few us a lot of techno-babble and counter-intuitive (but efficient) UI designs.
I completely agree. I don't want to bring the whole name change issue up again but this is part of what I have been discussing with people during the development of the name change proposal. As I see it, the Jabber community is bigger than what the JSF is doing. Ideally, we need three separate pillars to support the Jabber community. they need to be separate because they will have diametrically opposed charters.
1) jabber.net - mainstream IM service (a.k.a. Jabber Open IM Service, a.k.a. 'Jabber'). This is the AIM killer. It is run like a consumer IM business presenting a slick, easy to use website portal into one Jabber service. It's sole charter is to gain maximum marketshare (e.g. Jabber users) expanding the Jabber network. It's inherently unfair to the general community because:
a) It competes with other Jabber IM service providers.
b) It will choose and run one 'best' server (be that jabberd, or a commercial one if needed).
c) It will choose, and push users to one 'best' jabber client. one of the most overwhelming things with new users and Jabber is there's too many choices when it comes to clients. There should just be a 'if you're on windows, download this' one-click process.
However, we need this service to show that jabber is prime time, and a real contender. It also will help to gain market share for jabber users which is critical to legitimizing Jabber as a mainstream IM, and also provides more value to everyone on the jabber network. Hopefully this is something we can fund through at least in part ads but I suspect we'll need to contribute money to it from the Jabber community to run it.
2) jabber.org - open source jabber (a.k.a. Jabber Software Foundation). Essentially jabber studio, plus all the things that are useful for open source developers such as the technical documentation, mailing lists, jdev chatrooms, etc. that are currently on jabber.org. I'm not sure if this should be more like the apache model (managed) or the sourceforge model (free for all) but the essential goal is to encourage and support open source jabber development. Once again, this should be at least partly supported by advertising. However, this is where a lot more sponsor dollars should go. the primary goal is to create and maintain open source Jabber software.
3) xmpp.org - XMPP standards and compliance (a.k.a. ?? XMPP Group, XMPP Standards Foundation, Open IM Group, etc). This is what the current JSF is doing Re: JEPs, JIGs, etc. This organization needs to be fair to commercial and open source projects, and serve as a neutral place for standards to be developed and compliance to be tested.
-iain
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