15 Jul 2003

What's in a name? #

Posted in tech, jabber
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.