Jabber

[Kearns, Terry]

> That's yet another reason why it should be eliminated.
> 
> -- 
> Matt
> 

Regardless of what is "right", "correct", or even "superior", there are a
not too small fraction of 114,187,556 users who would disagree.

The question is, should some software be eliminated if 
a) there are not many people who find it useful (even though it may be
implemented correctly) ? or 
b) if it is NOT implemented correctly but over 100 million people are using
it. ?

Who wins, the ignorant majority or the "correct" minority?
What is the "correct" answer, and if the correct answer is (b), then is the
correct answer the correct outcome given that there are more people who
perceive the correct answer to be different?


On the firewall issue, I think Jeremy was inferring that a messaging system
that can piggy back http is more likely to succeed in most situations where
http traffic on port 80 has been permitted and most everything else is
blocked (like in a work environment where you have no say in the firewall
config).

Obviously XML with it's "all purpose"ness may be flexible and highly
interoperable (based on the condition of it's wide spread usage) introduces
a hideous overhead with it's human readability (even though it's designed
primarily to be machine parseable). Although, I would have to say that the
6-page packet for "hello world" raises some serious questions about how well
it has been implemented. That is to say, Jabber may not be an accurate
reflection of XML's suitability for encapsulating data of this type (instant
messaging). Either their XML vocabulary (schema) needs to be improved, or
they need to improve their usage of it if they want to make bandwidth usage
more efficient. I think that a 6-page packet for "hello world" should be
viewed as unacceptable for any self-respecting IM developer.