From Georges.Nissen@inria.fr Tue May 16 11:16:48 2000 Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by tobago.inria.fr (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id LAA20230 for ; Tue, 16 May 2000 11:16:47 +0200 Received: from margaux.inria.fr (margaux.inria.fr [128.93.8.2]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id e4G9Gk513357 for ; Tue, 16 May 2000 11:16:46 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by margaux.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA15055 for ; Tue, 16 May 2000 11:16:46 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from yana.inria.fr (yana.inria.fr [128.93.9.62]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id e4G9Gj513353; Tue, 16 May 2000 11:16:45 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from pcgni (pcgni.inria.fr [128.93.7.53]) by yana.inria.fr (8.8.5/8.8.7) with SMTP id LAA14419; Tue, 16 May 2000 11:16:44 +0200 (MET DST) Message-Id: <200005160916.LAA14419@yana.inria.fr> X-Sender: nissen@pop-rocq.inria.fr X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.2 Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 11:28:55 +0200 To: gilles.kahn@inria.fr, serge.abiteboul@inria.fr, sophie.cluet@inria.fr, eric.simon@inria.fr, patrick.valduriez@inria.fr, anne-marie.vercoustre@inria.fr, bernard.lang@inria.fr, alain.michard@inria.fr From: Georges NISSEN Subject: Naissance d'un projet ambitieux OpenSource de Distributed Collaborative Computing ( a base de XML ) dans la foulee de Napster, Gnutella,etc. Cc: gncomp@moore.inria.fr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Status: RO Content-Length: 5126 Lines: 101 + Jabber Launches Open Source Threat to AOL IM By Kevin Murphy Jabber Inc, a subsidiary of Webb Interactive Services Inc, has launched a formidable challenge to the dominance of America Online Inc in the instant messaging space, with the release of Jabber 1.0, the first open source IM system that will be interoperable with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). Jabber hopes to leverage the momentum of the open source movement and the emergence of distributed collaborative computing, notably used by the Gnutella and Napster projects, to take IM to the next level. Its ambitions include becoming the Internet Engineering Task Force-adopted standard, and moving IM from merely chat to a XML-based communications platform where users will be able to interact with back-end web-based services. At the core of its system are a series of gateways or "transports" that translate and route IM traffic from a Jabber user to either another Jabber user or a user of a rival system like AIM, Microsoft Corp's MSN Messenger, or Tribal Voice Inc's PowWow. The system uses standard DNS addressing, so a user could be joebloggs@msn.jabber.org or joebloggs@aol.microsoft.com, depending on which IM system the user was on, and assuming that Jabber or Microsoft were hosting Jabber servers. The ultimate intention is to have every organization that currently runs an email server, to also run a Jabber server or one of its descendants. The three competing systems mentioned will be among those supported in the 1.0 release, but Jabber core developer Thomas Muldowney told ComputerWire that interoperable chat is only the beginning. Longer term, the company intends to realize its revenue through Jabber-related consulting and implementation services. For example, said Muldowney, a transport could be built to communicate with e-commerce systems at a particularly web- savvy restaurant. As Jabber is XML based, a user could book a table using IM to talk directly to the restaurant's back-ending reservation engine, almost the same way email can be used currently to talk to low-end software devices like mailing list bots. Other features, like the usual news, sports and stock information, are already up and running, Muldowney said. The protocol itself uses technology Jabber calls XML Stream, where client and server create an open-ended XML document that is added to by parties (each message becomes an XML tag) and finished when the document (chat session) is closed. Muldowney said Jabber has been submitted to the IETF, which is currently working on a Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol (IMPP), but has been slow-moving. Jabber is one of many proposed IMPPs to be submitted for consideration by the IMPP working group. Muldowney said Jabber stands a chance as it is XML-based. Regardless of whether Jabber is adopted as IETF standard, the company is taking on the big boys with its launch. AOL, with its proprietary AIM and ICQ systems, has long held the market for IM clients, with some 91 million and 52 million downloads internationally, but has been accused of suppressing innovation in the space. Rival Tribal Voice, part of CMGI Inc, is currently gathering industry support from other AOL rivals to make interoperability a requirement for the US government's passing of the AOL Time Warner merger. Previous attempts by Tribal Voice and MSN to interoperate with AIM have failed when AOL has blocked them. But Jabber reckons it has a trump card that enables it to avoid such problems. The theory goes that because control of Jabber servers is decentralized, AOL would be unable to "firewall-out" Jabber Inc IP addresses, and would have to block each individual computer running a Jabber server. In theory, a home users could run a Jabber server for one or two users, meaning AOL would ultimately wind up blocking users accessing the internet from dialup accounts. Muldowney said the company is currently working on ways for the system to support dynamic IP addresses (like those assigned with a dialup account), meaning this would be possible. This of course all depends on snowballing support for Jabber. But the open source movement appears to be moving in the direction of Jabber-style distributed applications. The controversial Napster MP3-sharing system, which looks rather like Jabber's IM, allows users to set up trading servers across the internet for the purposes of viewing and swapping track listings. Even more innovative communications networks are springing up as open-source projects. The Gnutella project, for example, spawned out of an AOL subsidiary and now a maverick open-source project, will allow peer-to-peer networks of MP3 traders to be set up without centralized control. Likewise, The Free Network Project, hosted by VA Linux Systems Inc's SourceForge site, hopes to employ a similar model whereby information is encrypted and stored randomly on whichever machines happen to be connected to the network at any particular time, thus avoiding centralized servers and, controversially, legal/censorship issues.