The Jabber juggernaut continues to roll on, so let's get right down to business!
The developer community has been busy over the last month or two. I've noticed a lot of new Jabber clients out there, including TransactIM (from the eponymous JSF sponsor), neos mt, GCN, a plugin for Miranda, clients written in Squeak and Rebol, and (my favorite in the naming department) Chatopus for Palm. There is also a new gateway project for connecting Jabber servers to one of the UK's popular IM services, as well as a project that will enable IRC clients to use Jabber. Two new Jabber/XMPP servers have been released as well: OpenIM (an open-source implementation written in Java) and DeskNow WebMessenger. Rob Norris also recently announced the initial beta version jabberd2, which has gotten a lot of interest in the community because it is an all-new codebase and complies with the XMPP Internet-Drafts (more on them later).
The number of Jabber servers continues to grow, too. In the last few days I've added two Spanish-language servers to the public server list: JabberES and Mundo-Chat. Server admins may also like the new component page, which lists add-on components that admins can run with their servers. Another great resource for admins is the Script Repository, featuring lots of handy tools for managing a Jabber server installation. New scripts are being added all the time (such as one for enabling a phpBB web forum to authenticate against a Jabber server, as hosted at SwissJabber), so check back often!
Naturally, many server admins have been concerned about Microsoft's announcement that it will be turning off access to its service from older clients (and, by extension, the gateways from Jabber servers to the MSN service). However, it appears that the open-source community has the problem well in hand: the original MSN Transport has been updated to handle the modified protocol, there is a new MSN gateway project called "msn-tng", and over on SourceForge a unified gateway library is under construction. Never fear, open source is near!
Another recent event of note is the formation of an instant messaging working group within the Internet2 initiative. Because so many universities are running Jabber servers, the group will initially investigate ways to implement Jabber-based solutions for universities, such as server federation. This effort is just getting started, so look for results over the coming months, including perhaps some Jabber Enhancement Proposals for protocol additions.
Speaking of JEPs, there has been quite a bit of protocol activity lately. Both the XHTML-IM JEP and two file transfer JEPs (95 and 96) are currently in Last Call, with many more to follow soon, since the newly-elected Jabber Council is planning to clear out a number of older JEPs in the near future. And there are many new proposals, too, including some protocols for extended presence and an end-to-end encryption protocol that is similar to SSH. Subscribe to the Standards-JIG mailing list to keep up on the latest developments.
The big protocol question is, of course, "When will the XMPP Internet-Drafts become official RFCs?" The short answer is: we really don't know. The IETF Last Call for the two main documents (XMPP Core and XMPP IM) should happen any day now. The Last Call will probably last several weeks, at which time the IESG will deliberate and come to a decision. We'll definitely announce the Last Call to the Jabber community, since it will be the final chance for people to provide feedback about these important documents.
So much to talk about, but your friendly editor is out of time! In the next Jabber Journal I'll provide information about the projects and products that developers have told me about in response to my recent call for cool Jabber apps, so stay tuned.
And as always, Jabber on!
--stpeter