Happy New Year!
The beginning of a new year is often a time for reflection, and things are no different in the Jabber community. One thing I've been reflecting on of late is that last Saturday was the fourth anniversary of the Slashdot story, which marked the first public notice of Jabber. Since then there have been over 150,000 downloads of the jabberd server, over 75,000 postings to the Jabber mailing lists, and a steady churn of software development on hundreds of Jabber-based software projects. Although Jeremie began working on Jabber in 1998, we can think of the Slashdot story as the official birthday of the project. So happy birthday, Jabber! And if it sometimes seems as if Jabber is a bit immature, remember: it's only four years old and still has a lot of growing to do.
And Jabber is indeed growing in all directions. There are more Jabber clients and libraries and even server implementations than ever before. The protocol continues to be strengthened (especially through the IETF's XMPP Working Group) and expanded (through the JSF's JEP process and the hard work of many members of the Jabber community). More and more companies are adopting Jabber technology, and more and more developers are contributing code. All in all, the Jabber community is quite healthy and moving forward to our eventual goal of world domination.
What will 2003 bring? More of the same, but faster. Achieving RFC status for the XMPP Internet-Drafts, which should happen this year, will only increase the already strong interest in Jabber technologies. The release of jabberd 2.0 will provide a codebase that is much easier to contribute to. The development of a compliance program by the JSF will provide a way to certify protocol compliance by Jabber-based software, leading more robust interoperability. Administration of the Jabber trademark by the JSF will introduce greater transparency and give the community a direct stake in the protection of the Jabber name.
Not that the future of Jabber is assured, or that the path ahead won't contain some obstacles. The recent concern over AOL's IM patent shows that these obstacles can come from unlikely directions, even though this patent does not directly affect the Jabber community since Jabber technology does not infringe on it. As the community grows, it will be important to ensure that we maintain interoperability within the Jabber network and guarantee at least a basic feature set so that system administrators and end users receive a consistent experience. These and other initiatives need to be a priority for 2003 and beyond.
Before we move ahead, though, let's pause to give thanks for some of the recent "Christmas presents" we received from the dedicated developers in the Jabber community. These include new releases of existing projects like the Exodus and Nitro clients (for Windows and Mac OS X respectively) and the ever-popular GaduGadu Transport (only used in Poland from what I can tell). Plus temas has upgraded the code behind JabberStudio, making life easier and more productive for dozens of Jabber projects. And since the last issue of the Jabber Journal a number of new projects have been announced, as well:
It's been a great four years. Here's to many more.
Jabber on!
--stpeter