Instant Messaging (IM) software has mushroomed into one of the Internet’s latest “killer apps,” but most IM software is produced by companies like AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Each of those companies would like us to use their IM client software to chat with users on their network — and only their network.
For a while, open source hackers worked to reverse engineer the proprietary protocols of the commercial IM world so they could build their own clients. However, a few IM fans chose not to engage in this perpetual catch-up game and began to work on their own IM system — one which could interoperate with other IM systems. The project became known as Jabber.
While Jabber is often contrasted with proprietary instant messenger services such as AOL’s ICQ and AIM or Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, it differs from those consumer-oriented services in several crucial respects.
For one, Jabber has captured the attention of system administrators and security-conscious individuals everywhere, because anyone can run their own Jabber server, determine who can have accounts on that server, and even control whether or not the server is connected to the Internet. Combined with SSL encryption of client-server connections and end-to-end encryption of messages using PGP or GnuPG, Jabber gives organizations and individuals full control over instant messaging - something that’s not possible when all your traffic goes through the central servers of a large corporation based in Redmond, Washington or Reston, Virginia.
However, Jabber is about more than just…
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