[Foundation] Position PaperThis document can also be found at

Thu Jul 25 17:33:23 CDT 2002

Am I the last one? Yay! Oh, well, maybe mine is sooo good that you all 
will forgive me. And hey, I can always use the excuse that I couldn't do 
it earlier because I was working so hard on Jabber. :-)

I am Adam Theo, 23 years old, and from Tallahassee FL USA. I am the 
primary culprit behind [Theoretic Solutions (1)], and my loves include 
long walks, the [science of complex systems (2)], and listening to the 
[Foo Fighters (3)]. I am often on the jdev chatroom as "theo" or posting 
to standards-jig about some typo or lacking feature I found in a JEP.

I am a relative newbie to Jabber, having just came in after the 1.4.0 
server release, but have been knee-deep in it ever since. I was 
initially interested in Jabber both as a user to use AIM and ICQ at 
once, and for my ideas for the future of online communications (which 
are slowly becomming the [Crown (4)]).

I am running for both the Council primarily to make sure good ideas make 
their way into the future of Jabber, and the Board to make sure Jabber 
is seen with all the potential I know it has.

Background: I have little formal education, having dropped out of high 
school and later received my GED. I also have no technical work 
experience, having been employed only at fast food places and 
restaurants. Thankfully that is looking up, with a contract sponsorship 
from [Andre Durand (5)] to work on the open [PingID digital identity 
platform (6)]. Three years ago, in my troubled youth, I committed a long 
series of bad check and credit card fraud crimes, and went to county 
jail for four months. Huh? What do you mean I'm supposed to say these 
things for a political campaign...?

Contributions: Although I've only been with Jabber for a little over a 
year, I've made it a huge part of my life, and come to know it like the 
back of my hand. I use that knowledge to its fullest potential in many 
areas.
   *  Protocol: I have become very involved with the development of the 
protocol in both the user-friendliness and Internet infastructure areas 
because I hate unnecessary complexity, preferring elegance in all things.
      o I have been working heavily in the protocol in an attempt to 
make it more user-friendly with my [Jabber Icons spec (7)], and plan to 
get into the File Transfer and User Avatar issues.
      o I have been working to build my [Jabber Environments (8)] idea 
by first making sure the Atomic Protocols are created. This has begun by 
heavily [critiquing Disco (9)], and resulted in creating [my own PubSub 
mechanism (10)].
   *  Advocacy: I have also become very active in advocacy and promoting 
Jabber to outside projects and developers because I no longer believe in 
the "build it and they will come" philosophy, and the more minds working 
with Jabber, the better it will become.
      o I have so far successfully convinced the [DotGNU Project (11)] 
to [fully adopt Jabber as a routing transport (12)] equal with all 
others, and most of their developers are much more excited about Jabber 
than the limited and legacy HTTP protocol. Jabber will make a huge 
splash in the world as DotGNU grows.
      o I have also been promoting Jabber to the open [PingID Project 
(13)], which I have recently been sponsored to work on, in the hopes of 
it becomming a major routing transport just as it has with DotGNU.
      o Heavily promoted Jabber at O'Reilly's ET2001 conference, helping 
many people who were mildly interested in Jabber to fully realize its 
potential.
      o I will continue to take Jabber to other open source projects, 
and seek Council and Board positions to give those endeavors an official 
weight, which will be all the more powerful and useful.
   *  Code: I have tried my hand at programming and scripting, but after 
a year of it, I had to accept I just couldn't grok code. Now I try to 
find other ways to contribute to the codebases of the Jabber platform.
      o I originally organized the [JabberSMTP (14)] project with the 
help of Rob Norris and later Nick Perez, but I really can't claim any 
credit for it except for some shoddy customer service (they really did 
all the work). Hahaha... Me? Code? I couldn't if my life depended on it, 
sorry.
      o I pushed to get the Jabberd v1.4.2 server re-GPL'ed for the 
DotGNU Project. It had previously been only JOSL since the 1.2 line.
   * Social: I suppose my real calling to be on the Council and Board is 
that I often grace the halls of jdev chat and "hear the voice of the 
people", as well as take photo shots holding cute babies. Oh, and I'm a 
really smart guy. Ah, I'm such a people-person, and so modest, too...

Concerns: Although I see the awesome potential of Jabber, not everyone 
does, and unfortunately for rightful reasons. These problems need to be 
fixed before Jabber can take the world on by storm.
   * Technical: With enough brainpower anything is solvable. We just 
need more brainpower, is all...
      o I want Jabber to evolve and grow into a generic routing 
transport, away from its clunky IM beginnings. I believe it cannot do 
this suddenly, but must gradually change bit by bit with a guiding 
vision. The first step is to create the Atomic Protocols as per my 
[Jabber Environments(15)] proposal, which involves Disco, PubSub, Auth, 
Perms, and others.
      o Jabber must at all times keep usability in mind. Not only 
simplicity for developers, but also trying to think like and end user 
and develop for them.
   * Legal: While the technical issues are fixed with pure brainpower, 
the legal ones often involve much of the human element to solve...
      o I am very concerned about the Jabber trademark. I firmly believe 
it should belong to the Jabber community through the JSF, and will work 
every step of the way to make sure that happens.
      o I am also concerned about the recent work with the IETF. I 
understand that many members have worked very hard to have the IETF 
adopt Jabber, but I could only support this as long as the JSF retained 
development ownership over the Jabber protocol, instead of handing it 
over to a IETF Working Group.
   * Promotional: As if legal issues didn't involve enough human 
interaction, promotional issues are all about thinking like a human, but 
unlike yourself...
      o The Jabber documentation needs serious work. Not only in 
substance but also in organization. Jabber is a technology for a wide 
range of people, and the documentation needs to show this by allowing 
people to immediately find answers and convincing arguments right when 
the need them without having to wade through highly technical 
manuscripts or user client guides if they don't need them.

(1) http://www.theoretic.com
(2) 
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Philosophy/Philosophy_of_Science/Philosophy_of_Physics/Complex_Systems/
(3) http://www.foofighters.com
(4) http://www.theoretic.com/index.cgi?Crown
(5) http://www.andredurand.com
(6) http://www.pingid.org
(7) http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0038.html
(8) http://www.theoretic.com/index.cgi?Jabber_Environments
(9) http://mailman.jabber.org/pipermail/standards-jig/2002-July/001153.html
(10) http://www.theoretic.com/index.cgi?Jabber_Subscribe
(11) http://www.dotgnu.info
(12) http://www.dotgnu.info/pipermail/announce/2002-May/000004.html
(13) http://www.pingid.org
(14) http://www.theoretic.com/index.cgi?JabberSMTP
(15) http://www.theoretic.com/index.cgi?Jabber_Environments
-- 
     /\  Adam Theo, Age 23, Tallahassee FL USA
    //\\   Email & Jabber: theo at theoretic.com
   //  \\  (Boycotting AOL, therefore no AIM or ICQ)
=//====\\=
//  ||  \\  Theoretic Solutions: http://www.theoretic.com
     ||         "Building Ideas by Bringing them Together"
     ||      Jabber Protocol: http://www.jabber.org
     ||         "The Next Generation Communications Protocol"
     ||  "A Free-Market Socialist Patriotic American Buddhist"