Jabber, Cisco, XMPP, and You
2008-09-19
The technology websites have been abuzz today about Cisco's acquisition of Jabber, Inc., where I have worked since October 2000. Because a number of folks seem to be confused about the impact of this news on the XMPP developer community, I'd like to answer a few of today's frequently asked questions.
-
Will I still be able to run my Jabber server at mydomain.com? Of course! All Jabber/XMPP software projects and products implement the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, which is an open standard that anyone can implement or deploy.
-
Will open-source projects be prevented from using the word "Jabber" in their project names? No, because the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) has a legal agreement with Jabber, Inc. regarding the Jabber trademark, which Cisco has inherited through this acquisition.
-
Is Cisco going to shut down the XSF? No. They couldn't do that even if they wanted to, because the XSF is a legally independent, non-profit organization that is not controlled or owned by Jabber, Inc. But they don't want to. Indeed, they think the presence of a strong, independent standards development organization is a good thing.
-
Will Cisco continue Jabber, Inc.'s support of the XSF, in particular by sponsoring you (Peter Saint-Andre) to keep writing all those XMPP specifications? Yes. Cisco wants to be very supportive of XMPP standardization, and I am a big factor in XMPP standardization, therefore Cisco wants to be very supportive of me. :)
I'm excited to be part of the Cisco team, and I think the whole community will see even more good things happening because of their support.
Peter Saint-Andre > Journal