OT: Chat server

[Hung Jung Lu]

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:
> > If you are serious about long term, you should probably use Jabber
> > instead.
> > 
> > http://www.jabber.org/ 
> 
> Why?  IRC seems a lot better for chatting.

Perhaps this helps a little bit:

http://www.jabber.org/about/overview.php

Jabber is just more popular, and shows up more on my radar screen. I
started to look into Jabber recently only after the suggestion of a
guru net friend. I guess part of the reason is: (a) XML-based, (b)
formalized standard. The XML-based may seem frivolous, but from what I
have seen in the growth of popularity of XML-RPC through the years, I
can see that it is a factor in people's choice, despite that they
often don't touch the XML part themselves. Jabber is also gradually
becoming a developer's tool. Dr. Dobb's Journal recently has an
article on it. In fact, when one works with multiple computers, I
think Jabber kind of becomes essential: what else is there for
centralized monitoring that is open-source, easy to use,
language-independent and platform-independent? Sure, XML-RPC may be
the easiest way to make programs talk across computers, but Jabber
takes care of many admin things for you: security, monitoring/logging,
fault-tolerant, etc. Now, I know you are only interested in chatting,
but maybe down the future you'd like to expand your system. Think
about controlling computers by using the very same chat client. Why
limit oneself to Person-to-Person conversations, when one can reserve
the power of Person-to-Application and Application-to-Application
conversations as well? The possibilities are endless. Also, I just
don't see people graviting towards IRC. I see people graviting towards
Jabber. E.g.: Mitch Kapor chose Jabber as the instant messenger (IM)
for his open-source alternative ("Chandler") to Microsoft's Outlook
(see http://osafoundation.org/Chandler-Product_FAQ.htm.) I could be
wrong, but that's my overall impression.

regards,

Hung Jung