[Foundation] position paper

[David Waite]

Am I the only person who tried to post his position paper by 
alphabetical order??

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I'm David Waite, known as 'mass' or 'akuma' in the jdev chatroom. I've 
been involved with Jabber since September 1999, when I realized that 
writing my own IM system was hard (especially with the schedule I kept 
through college), and that helping another one with most of the same 
vision would be more productive.

The only obvious contribution I have made, software-wise, has been the 
last incarnation of the JabberBeans library. Most of my contributions 
have been to protocol design, with sprinkles of evangelism and advice as 
well as contributed bits here and there to other projects.

Positions:

*  We need to work on our standardization process within the JSF. There 
isn't enough interaction between the council (myself included) and the 
people who are working on new JEPs, and there have been problems 
throughout the first year causing the process to be delayed or to fall 
apart for nearly every JEP. There have been (by my count) 7 
standards-track JEPs proposed, and in the first year _none_ of them have 
been finalized.

* We need to finalize publish/subscribe and feature negotiation. This 
should be in -everyone's- interest, and I know all of my 'opponents' 
agree. Technology-wise, it should be our highest priority, since all 
non-required protocol elements should be negotiating features in some 
manner, and all content to be published out should use a standard method.

* Pushing Jabber forward into the IETF will be a huge step. However, if 
the JSF decides to take this course of action we need to determine what 
this means to the community at large, since it will mean the IETF gains 
control of the direction of the protocol.

Without our current organization around the development of the protocol, 
or our former organization around development of open-source code, we 
will need to re-evaluate what Jabber and the JSF really stand for.

* Finally, for JNG - we need to have more of a focus on prototyping work 
on this front, and less talk. Whether this is an evolutionary step (as 
simple as requiring feature negotiation and pub/sub support in clients) 
or more revolutionary, actual work showcasing ideas will help to build 
excitement around ideas, as well as refine them.

The original open-source server was created by a small group of people 
who were highly motivated and truely excited about creating an open, 
extensible XML-based messaging system. We need to figure out a way to 
recreate that level of motivation and excitement also among the current 
community to continue to move forward. Sites like JabberStudio help 
greatly in this; we need to promote both jabberstudio use for projects, 
and more community members to write projects for and around JabberStudio.

-David Waite
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