How many Jabber developers can dance on the head of a pin? Re: [Foundation] I wish there was no Foundation

[John Hebert]

6/28/01 6:42:19 PM, Adam Theo <adamtheo at theoretic.com> wrote:

>Hello, Adam Theo here;
...
>after some quick thinking, i have to agree completely with you. i don't 
>see how it is neccessary for jabber.com to use the reasources to build a 
>seperate server.

Adam, you are confusing the fact that the Jabber effort is ultimately an
effort to build a good XML messaging protocol and not an effort to
build a server. Jabber.com is trying to make money off of a robust,
scalable server that implements the protocol, while also jumping through
hoops to make the protocol popular (and maybe even standard, one day).

> i think it would be perfectly logical and reasonable to 
>pool our efforts on one server (open source), and let jabber.com sell it 
>(with full support, installation, etc, ) to corporations and other big 
>institutions that are wary  towards open source or free stuff.

Though it may seem so to pool efforts, it is not. I personally would
like to see servers that implement the Jabber protocol in many different
languages like Java and Python, both in open and closed source.

>price: well, that doesn't solve the problem of them being wary of 
>free/cheap stuff, since the server would be OS, you may ask. i answer: 
>to hell it does! who says jabber.com has to sell the server and support 
>for pennies? let them charge thousands of bucks for the one server!

The problem is that they would sell only one. :)

Well, maybe a few, but the word that the source for Jabber is free would
get around. And that would be the end of that. To test my theory, burn a
CD with the source code for the Linux kernel and GNU tools on it and then
convince someone, anyone to buy it for more than 3 figures. 

> that way, jabber.com would have more $$ to hire and train top-notch support 
>staff, and even better, afford to pay people like Jer and other 
>jabber.com employees a higher salary for the same amount of work! who 
>could be against that! (well, maybe us who are not employed by 
>jabber.com... :-).
>
>hm... *scratching chin* i really like this idea.
>
>only problem: could it work?

Nope, at least not initially. Selling open source software in the hopes of making
money on services takes a little while to become profitable. RedHat _just_
closed a profitable quarter, and they've been in business since 1994. And RedHat
sells a whole operating system, while Jabber is, again, a protocol, not a server.

I propose that we not clutter up the Foundation mailing list with this thread. Does
someone know of another mailing list or forum that may be more appropriate?

--
John Hebert
System Engineer
http://www.vedalabs.com
Changing your state of mind through sound.