[Foundation] Jabber (tm)

[Bill Abbas]

On Monday 21 May 2001 13:28, Michael Bauer wrote:
> Just to be clear, we're only talking about Sun's Java
> Trademark policy, not their general attitude towards open
> source.

That's a relief :-)  Just to clarify things because I see 
Java being used as an example: Java is not open source.  
Not even close.  Sun controls the language and has engaged 
in fabulous contortions to avoid losing control of it to a 
standards body.  

Otherwise, here's my 2 kopeks:

I work for a company which may eventually decide 
(hopefully) to contribute resources to Jabber development.  
In order to make this case to them, however, I think that 
all companies involved in the open source effort have got 
to be on essentially equal footing.  I certainly don't mind 
j.c getting appropriate credit for being a large part of 
the open source Jabber server, but it's tough for me to 
sell my company's management on the wisdom of what, to 
them, is basically building someone else's brand.  That's 
what our marketing/business people see when they look at 
j.o and j.c.

Which is one of the reasons why I would be happy to see the 
open source protocol and the reference implementation 
renamed:

1) As stated, companies like mine would be more willing to 
cough up developers (yuck :) if the effort was perceived as 
not disproportionately benefiting one company.

2) We could do this now, because, frankly, it's not like 
Jabber is a household word at this point.  OSS fans and 
software geeks know about it, but I don't think it's 
established as a brand in any real sense of the word.  In 
addition, products like LotusXSL and XML4J made the 
transition to open source and were renamed in the process, 
and it doesn't seem to have hurt them.

3) Ummm, I don't quite know how to put this without 
invoking significant flames, but ... the name Jabber just 
bites it anyhow.  It has negative connotations.  I'm not a 
marketing wiz or anything, but a word which is synonomous 
with "Gibberish", "babble", and "drivel" is not something I 
would consider as my first choice.

4) I liked the sound of "IMTP".  It kind of leads in the 
direction I think we all want to go, of establishing an IM 
protocol as a fundamental, standardized, IM transport akin 
to HTTP and FTP.  Somehow, I just don't see putting a 
"jabber    5222/tcp" line in my /etc/services :)

=Bill