Jabber is often compared to Linux. Jabber is an open, secure, commercial free IM message service with most of the same functionality as MSN, AIM, ICQ and so on. The development of Jabber is done in open source in much the same way as Linux and can in many ways be compared.
Upsides with Jabber:
- Open source – many different servers and clients to chose from, and custimization opportunities
- Based on standards – all parts of Jabber is based on standards (look at XMPP for more information)
- Proven stability – Jabber has been used in many years (since 1998) and is daily in use by millions of users (Google Talk is Jabber / XMPP based)
- Decentralized – the possibility to control your own server, protect information and apply customized security templates
- Secure – Jabber supports SASL and TLS which ensures proper security and encryption. Jabber Norway is protected by XMPP Certificates from Startcom
Since many have friends and contacts on MSN, ICQ and others, there are transports in Jabber which enables you to connect to these services. In this way a Jabber user can talk to all his/hers friends and only use a single client. Jabber.no has support for MSN, AIM, ICQ, IRC and somewhat Yahoo! (not in development anymore and might be removed).
Another unique feature with Jabber is the conference possibilities. Here on jabber.no we have the conference server installed and then you can create temporary or permanent conference rooms
Information gathered from jabber.org.
I enjoyed it! Sounds wonderful…jabber.no!!!
Offline / online notification is on the home page now. Hope it helps. For now we have discontinued the use of transports. All other networks are moving towards XMPP anyways so I do not think there is value in putting in more efforts trying to maintain them.