The Jabber Software Foundation (JSF), the non-profit organization that builds open application protocols on top of the IETF's Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), today confirmed that Internet2's I2IM working group is focusing its efforts on XMPP. As described on the I2IM's web site, XMPP "has benefited from an open process, open-source implementations, and, recently, IETF-led protocol standardization."
XMPP is the XML protocol for instant messaging that grew out of the Jabber open-source project and that is now in Last Call within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). XMPP has been widely considered the lingua franca of instant messaging, used as a protocol for connecting open source and proprietary IM applications.
I2IM, also known as the Integrated Infrastructure for Instant Messaging Working Group, reports that "services like IRC and AOL Instant Messenger have been widely used by university people for university-related work, raising issues of authentication, authorization, privacy, and legal compliance. As IM becomes an increasingly popular alternative to email, users look to campus IT services for the same level of support and integration traditionally provided for central email services."
"Jabber and XMPP have had significant presence within academic circles for years," said Peter Saint-Andre, executive director of the JSF. "Through I2IM, we are working to make XMPP the federated standard for IM and perhaps other middleware functions across the academic landscape, centralizing IM communication on individual campuses and securely enabling them between different institutions."
The Jabber Software Foundation (JSF) is a non-profit organization that builds open application protocols on top of the IETF's Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). Widely considered the lingua franca of instant messaging, XMPP is an emerging Internet standard for real-time messaging and presence that grew out of the Jabber open-source project, and that continues to be developed within both the IETF and the broader Jabber community.