EasyCollaborationWithJabber

Revision 2 as of 2006-10-24 14:53:58

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Summary

Jabber (also called XMPP) is an open and standardized IM protocol, which provides a feature called MUC (Multi User Chat), where users can create conference rooms on a jabber server to communicate with each other. We should consider to deploy this technology. This specifiation defines application fields of Jabber withhin the Ubuntu community and Pro / Cons for using it. In case of positive conclusion the implementation also goes into this specification.

Rationale

At the moment the most communication in the Ubuntu community takes place in Ubuntu forums, mailings lists and IRC. Those communications forms are limited to plain text messaging. Here possible reasons why we should deploy Jabber:

  • Federation In Jabber all servers are connected to each other. Therefore it doesn't matter on which Jabber server a user registered, he can enter a conference hosted on another server without opening an extra connection to this server.

  • Flexibility With Jingle Jabber is very flexible in the way it communicates. While at the moment it only supports text messaging and VoIP, it is extendable to video conferencing and other communications forms in future.

  • Consistency At the moment there are a crowd of protocols used to handle the different communication forms. ICQ / MSN / AIM and mail for user-to-user communication, SIP and Skype for VoIP and IRC for multi-user chat. In oppostion to that Jabber is desidgned to integrate all those communication forms in one protocol.

  • Security All connections between clients and servers are by default encrypted via TLS / SASLS. To further improve security users can use the built-in PGP encryption.

Use cases

  • Bob is a new Ubuntu user. He wonders why 3D-accelleration is not working. He calls up his Jabber account in Gaim, which he is running anyway for chatting with his Google Talk friends. He enters the ubuntu-support conference room to get assistance from other users to get 3D-accelleration working.
  • John experiences a problem in Ubuntu. He doesn't know Jabber, but he's already familiar with Gaim, because he uses it for chatting with his ICQ buddies. He clicks in Ubuntu on 'get Help' and Ubuntu guides him through the Jabber account registration process, then it automatically enters the ubuntu-support conference room.

  • Sandra's Paket Manager crashes. The responsible developers, who have lodged their Jabber ID in Launchpad get a crash report on their Jabber client in real time. (note: This can be easiliy done by the Jabber publish-subscribe specification. See http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0060.html)

  • Another thinkable option is a support base like Qunu. See http://www.qunu.com

Scope

Design

Implementation

Unresolved issues

BoF agenda and discussion

CategorySpec