Dustological Empiricism and Instant Messaging

Instant messaging (IM) is sort of like e-mail, but, you know, instant. E-mail is clumsy for quick conversations. IM lets you talk to a friend knowing that he or she is online right now. You can have a conversation as immediate and natural as you might have by phone. Many IM clients even allow you to see when your friend is typing responses to you. There are several IM networks and clients to choose from. The two biggest IM programs for Linux, Gaim and Kopete, support all of the major networks.

Who came up with a crazy system of different networks, and what were they thinking? Well, they are commercial companies, and they were thinking about money. Instant messaging first got popular on the America Online Internet service as a method for AOL members to talk to other members. The method got so popular that AOL started letting people outside the AOL network use the service as well. It was good advertising for them and a good selling point for their service. Of course, whenever anything works well, you get other companies copying it. There are now a myriad of instant-messaging services and programs. Among the most popular services are AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, and ICQ.

There have been attempts to get these separate services capable of talking to one another, but the companies resist. AOL and Yahoo! announced plans to get together on a service that they intend to sell to businesses. Other than that venture, the closest you can get is to have an account on every service on which you know a friend has an account. Until the utopian future day when IM communications can be open, you're just talking in different rooms.

Striving for a Jabber Nirvana

No very convincing technical reasons explain why companies cannot have their instant-messaging protocols talk to one another. The only real reason is good old-fashioned capitalism and competition. You can say good and bad things about that, but the one thing I will say is that it is all a little inconvenient.

Everyone can use e-mail because there is a standard. You can send an e-mail to friends without having to think about what network or protocol they use. We all use the same method for e-mail. Instant messaging currently has no standard. That's where Jabber comes in.

Jabber is a free, open, public protocol based on streaming XML. Whether or not you know, or care to know, what that means, just know that it means that Jabber is free, open, and public. Anyone can legally write an instant-messaging client application that uses Jabber without getting letters from any lawyers. Anyone can run a Jabber server without fear of being told to cease and desist. We can have a variety of programs to choose from and still be able to talk to each other on the same network.

Of course, that can happen only if we all help. In this case, one of the best ways to help Jabber, and to help create a standard, is to simply use the Jabber protocol and network. Get an account with Jabber, and get your friends and family to use it, too. When we create a standard, there will be a true free market for both the commercial companies and the open source developers. The instant-messaging client that will win the day will be the one with the best features and ease of use. Corporations can still show ads in the clients. Open source companies and developers can have the freedom to create new programs using the open, standard protocol. We can all get together and talk in the same room.

Learn how to get online with a Jabber account with the Jabber User Guide, at http://www.jabber.org/user/userguide/.

[ANNOUNCER]Cue Music Thus ends Susan's Soapbox. I hope you'll join us next time when we will talk about how Susan really hates it when the food on her plate touches the other food on the plate.