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The Jabber Jihad: Universal Instant Messaging
10/27/2000

America Online has said it supports the idea of a universal protocol for open instant messaging, and some parties are asking the FTC to make this a prerequisite of approving AOL's merger with Time Warner. The company appears to be dragging its feet, possibly to drag out its proprietary advantage. But with workarounds like Jabber, is that a problem?

Listen to this discussion (12:45 mins, 3.7 MB):

John Ochwat
Technology Reporter for O'Reilly Network and Forbes ASAP

"[AOL has] every advantage in the world for not moving on this. They have a monopoly position. They have over 90 percent of the market. You can make the case that instant messaging is free, so what good is a monopoly. But the AOL Instant Messenger has a little ad window on it, which they can sell, and that's lucrative. They also steer more traffic to their portal pages, ICQ.com and AOL.com. … And it's a classic case of viral marketing: if you and I are both on here and a friend of ours is going to get a chat client, they're going to want to chat with us. And if the only way they can do that is AOL Instant Messenger, that's probably the one they're going to pick up."

Peter Saint-Andre
System Architect, Jabber.com

"The [Jabber] server is where the complexity is, and that was done so that it would be easy to write clients. So there are Java clients, there's Linux, and for just about all the platforms out there. There's a Palm client in the works. We designed it so that the clients are pretty easy, and there's a plethora of clients and more every day. Depending on which server you connect with, you can connect to other services out there in the world, that would include ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, some of the major IM systems."

Derrick Story
Managing Editor, O'Reilly Network

"I can see that, because of the peer-to-peer nature of Jabber, it would be difficult to close down the AOL transport. One of the ways that they could present problems for everyone would be by constantly tweaking their server situation so that people have to constantly scramble to update the transports … if they really wanted to play hardball."

Previously in the Open Source Roundtable:

Other Open Source Roundtables:

The Jabber Jihad: Universal Instant Messaging
AOL says it supports a universal protocol for open IM, but the company appears to be dragging its feet -- possibly to its proprietary advantage. But with workarounds such as Jabber, is that a problem? [10/27/2000]

Free Riding on Gnutella
Xerox PARC researchers found that nearly half the files shared on the service come from one percent of the hosts. Could this unequal distribution of the burden jeopardize the file-sharing service? [10/09/2000]

Foil the Filters Contest
Does House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who advocates the use of filtering software, know that it blocks access to his web site? We talk to the Digital Freedom Network about the pros and cons of censorware on the Open Source Roundtable. [09/29/2000]

O'Reilly's Peer-to-Peer Summit
Tim O'Reilly and Jon Udell say peer-to-peer is a lot more than Napster. [09/22/2000]

Crunch Time for Napster
Nicholas Petreley says it's not about free speech, it's about free stuff. Meanwhile, SaveNapster.com worries that squashing Napster will hurt peer-to-peer. [09/15/2000]

When Will We See Linux PDAs?
Tim Wilkinson, CEO of Transvirtual Technologies, talks about PocketLinux and the future of Linux in the palmtop. [09/01/2000]

Developers Explain - Why RSS 1.0?
O'Reilly Network publisher Dale Dougherty talks with some of the core developers behind the new spec proposal for RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0) about the background behind RDF, the need for a standard, and what RSS enables [08/25/2000]

The Gnome Foundation: Is 'As Good' Good Enough?
The newly formed Gnome Foundation aims to build a desktop environment for Linux that's as easy to use as Microsoft's Windows. Will that be good enough? [08/18/2000]

Windows Media Player 7: Did Microsoft Get it Right?
David Strom has seen the future of digital music: Microsoft's Windows Media Player. Did they get it right? [08/11/2000]

Where's That Lizard?!
The Web Standards Project has taken Mozilla to task for ceding the browser market to Microsoft. Is there still hope for the project? An audio roundtable with WSP's Tim Bray and Alphanumerica's David Boswell. [08/04/2000]

What will be in Perl 6?
At O'Reilly's Open Source Conference in Monterey earlier this month, Perl creator Larry Wall announced the start of work on Perl 6. This week, O'Reilly Network Publisher Dale Dougherty talks with Perl.com managing editor Mark-Jason Dominus and Perl Mongers director brian d foy about the announcement, its meaning, and the reaction of the Perl community [07/28/2000]

Is Carnivore Eating You?
The FBI wants to install black boxes at ISPs to monitor email traffic of suspects. What are civil libertarians doing to try to stop it? [07/18/2000]

Napster Rides Again
Is the song-swapping service a model for a new breed of Net application? A roundtable discussion with News.com's John Borland and Steve Pizzo of Forbes ASAP. [07/14/2000]





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O'Reilly Network Weekly Open Source Roundtable Sponsored by IBM developerWorks

O'Reilly Network Weekly
Open Source Roundtable
Sponsored by IBM developerWorks