There has been a lot of
discussion
among the
members of the
JSF about the use of the term Jabber.
Some
believe that
the name is too easily confused with Jabber, Inc’s, and therefore,
should not be used. There are others who feel an emotional attachment to
the name that they have rallied behind for years. Still others believe that
while their may be some confusion resulting from the name, this confusion
can be overcome by demostratively showing that their products are
technicaly superior than those of Jabber, Inc’s.
The evidence
Stephen Lee mentioned several articles in a post
which he states, "confuse the JSF, Jabber and Jabber Inc." I
don’t understand how can make such a brash statement. If you read the
articles, all three clearly reference Jabber, Inc.’s products, and/or
are related to press releases that Jabber, Inc. has put out. When I pointed
out
his mistake, he brushed aside
my points and ignored them. If he really wanted to prove his point (and the
point made in the original proposal), I think he should be more careful
about what he provides as evidence.
Matt Tucker argued several points in favor of the change, including his
belief that since the JSF is producing extensions to XMPP, then these
extensions should all be called XMPP. While he agreed
that XMPP provides the foundation of a "basic IM protocol," and
that the extensions created in the JSF create a "full-featured IM
system," he did not agree that another name was appropriate. After he
asked for examples of other protocols that were given different names for
their extensions, I offered
WebDAV. He countered by saying that
WebDAV was "a new system for a totally different purpose that happens
to be built on top of an existing protocol." Isn’t that what PubSub is? Or how about
XML-RPC over Jabber,
or SOAP over Jabber?
Aren’t these new systems that serve a totally different purpose that
happen to be built on top of an existing protocol?
My feelings
I’ve gone over my feelings on the matter numerous times on the list.
It should be pretty clear by now that I am against dropping the term
Jabber. Aside from the fact that I like the name better, I think it serves
to better identify what the Jabber Software Foundation does. It has
mindshare. Some would argue
that there isn’t a general public awareness of the name. I think
they’re wrong. Take this article on ONLamp.com about Jabber at OSCON. Or this
article
on Australian site The Age. Both
articles clearly talk about Jabber, the open source protocol, and movement,
with the latter briefly referencing XMPP, which Jabber is based on.
Is now the right to rename and rebrand Jabber? No. I don’t think it
is. The community has already invested so much into the name, and the name
does mean something to a large (and ever growing) group of people. Do we
really want to throw away something that we’ve invested five years
into? I hope not.