[JDEV] General Welcome! (please read)

[Jeremie <jeremie@jabber.org>]

This message is intended to help familiarize everyone involved or
interested in Jabber as to the status and direction of the project as a
whole.  We're just bridging into a new phase of development for Jabber, so
I thought this would be a good time to take a larger look at where we have
been, where we are, and where we are going. 


### Jabber?

It's been an interesting and bumpy ride so far.  Jabber started almost a
full year ago when I realized that I couldn't stand ICQ and wanted instant
messaging to work FOR ME since it was becoming a frequent tool.  As I
started developing it and talking to others, I quickly came to realize
that I wasn't the only one looking in this direction.  Soon I started to
understand that the approach I was taking was unique and had significant
potential to solve this and other problems for lots of other people.  So I
took the time to develop my ideas fully and start coding them as best I
could.


### Jabber.

After I announced Jabber in early January of this year, things started to
materialize and Jabber became a full-fledged open source project.  The
resources involved were a bit more than I expected and development slowed,
but some important landmarks have been met.  The most significant
development is that Jabber now uses a full-fledged XML parser, Expat, the
same one used by Perl, Mozilla, and Apache(future versions).  This has
allowed a more expressive protocol modeled after a normal XML document,
which is easier for other XML parsers to process and programmers to deal
with.


### Jabber!

After an almost complete re-write from the ground up, the next release is
quickly approaching.  This release will bring a solid server base and
stable protocol/API to start building on for other important pieces of
Jabber.  There are a couple of strategic directions from this point
forward:

o) Documentation
	A large effort needs to be made to fully document Jabber from the
source code level all the way up to end-user FAQs.  This includes man
pages, developer READMEs, operation guides, development overviews, user
introductions, and so forth.  This may be one of the most lacking pieces
yet, and will be getting a good deal of attention over the next phase.

o) Clients
	Already there is some great client development going on, and I
only expect this to dramatically ramp up as people start to actually use
Jabber.  We currently have Win32, GTK, Java, command line, and TCL clients
progressing wonderfully, with a pure HTML based CGI client and a
Mozilla-integrated client on the drawing board.  There will be MANY needs
to serve in this area, so expect lots of activity!

o) Transports
	One of the single most important features of Jabber is the
transparent medium-independence, so that anything speaking Jabber can also
transparently talk to ICQ, AIM, Yahoo pager, email, IRC, and more.  This
all happens "on the network" without requiring any linking or
application-level effort.  Expect to see some RAPID growth here in the
very near future as ICQ and AIM transports get rolling and Jabber users
can start replacing their old clients and still talk to their old buddies.


### Getting Involved

This is a wonderfully vast and experience-rich project to start getting
involved with.  We are at the stage now where much help is needed in lots
of areas, and you have the opportunity to get "in" early and play a major
role.  Myself and others already know that Jabber has the potential to
explode onto the net, possibly as the next "killer app" piggybacking off
of the XML revolution, so come join the excitement and help shape the
future of instant messaging!  The most important places to help at are:

* Clients: Assist with an existing client development project or start
your own

* Transports: Help create a bridge if you are familiar with ICQ, AIM, or
any other messaging protocol

* Testing: Check out the clients and play with the servers, report bugs,
participate on jdev

* Core Code: Help with portability, performance, bugs, functionality, is
all appreciated

* Modules: Write modules to manage users and user information on the
server-side

* Promote: Help promote the platform for it's virtues and bring more
experience to the development pool


### Dreamworld

It may sound dreamy, but Jabber has the potential to change a lot of
rules.  If you are familiar with unix, especially in a university
environment, you'll know how finger, talk, ytalk, who, and write all work
and play a fun and important role.  Jabber can become a drop-in
replacement on a unix distribution for all of those services, and because
of it's architecture, still maintain backward compatibility.  The
independence of medium and availability of transports will cause a
consolidation of effort at the programmers level, so an application being
developed can easily plug into a near real-time rich communication
environment.  In other words, for example, a programmer could write a
simple perl script that would instantly be accessible via a web browser,
windows client, and from AIM, and communicate back to any of those.  Think
of all of the "small instant" pieces of data that would increase in value
exponentially by being transported via Jabber: stock tickers, news alerts,
weather updates/warning, error messages, important company announcements,
calendar notices, and so on.  There is a good deal of email on corporate
intranets that would be far better communicated via Jabber, especially if
it is time critical.  In the end, you start to realize the immense
potential of this platform and project, and then you realize that it's
inevitable and going to be here Real Soon Now. 


### Conclusion

We've made some amazing progress, and we are now at the turning point
where development picks up.  There is a lot of great things happening
here, and anyone is welcome to join in to help create a free open instant
messaging platform!  Keep an eye out over the next few months for more
exciting development, and thanks to those already developing, supporting,
and promoting Jabber!

Jer
jeremie@jabber.org