Re: Open Talk / Open Chat

On 5/9/07, Dave Cridland <dave <at> cridland.net> wrote:
> Searchability is very useful, these days, I agree, and Talk certainly
> doesn't gain anything there.

Google Talk is the top search result for "talk" on Google, Yahoo!,
Ask, and MSN. I'm confident that a generic "Talk," would do fine in
search engines as more Talk services popped up.

> It would, however, be useful if Google Talk (et al) would refer to
> their service as a Jabber service (which is different to an XMPP
> service). For me, anyway, Jabber = XMPP + XMPP-IM + <a couple of
> XEPs>.

Is this true? If there is consensus on this, I can probably look into
having this changed. I was under the impression that "Jabber" was
considered deprecated by the XSF. We've just changed Pidgin to refer
to "XMPP" instead of "Jabber."

It seems that even amongst ourselves, there's great confusion about
the meanings of names we're already using. Those who don't follow us
closely are even *more* confused. You should see some of the
explanations I've seen from Pidgin users regarding the Jabber to XMPP
switch.

We really need to come up with a HOWTO that explains all the
terminology we use, how to use it, and what their meanings are. Then
we need to commit to it, so that everythig is consistent everywhere. I
really shouldn't need to choose between "Jabber" and "Google Talk" in
Adium and "XMPP" in Pidgin. Since I doubt we're likely to come to a
unanimous opinion on this, might it be appropriate to put the issue up
to the members for a vote?

-s.