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Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

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Re: Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

#11

Post by mweibel »

pilgrim689 wrote: post #8
Slimy wrote: post #3

I wonder if this is because Microsoft is becoming better and better at embracing open source when it sees a business advantage to do so, or if it's simply a last-ditch effort to keep Messenger alive as more and more people use it less frequently or not at all because the likes of smartphones, apps, and Facebook (Chat) are becoming more widely adopted.

I'm guessing it's the former. In the past 2 weeks I've heard MS submit a patch to Redis, they've helped bring Node.js to Windows, Phil Haack joined GitHub primarily to bring C# into that open source community's limelight,... and now this. Seems to me like someone's been pushing the open source agenda within Microsoft.

Seems like Microsoft is becoming more likeable recently. I hope this happens for their main products, too :)

Re: Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

#12

Post by PakG1 »

Animus7 wrote: post #6
Slimy wrote: post #3

I wonder if this is because Microsoft is becoming better and better at embracing open source when it sees a business advantage to do so, or if it's simply a last-ditch effort to keep Messenger alive as more and more people use it less frequently or not at all because the likes of smartphones, apps, and Facebook (Chat) are becoming more widely adopted.

Doesn't this basically summarize Microsoft's entire business strategy these days? Wait until some piece of tech is firmly entrenched, then move to implement your own instance, more often than not with an enterprise angle. More often than not infuriatingly incompatible unless your entire stack is Microsoft. This happened with iPhone, cloud hosting, touch/tablet OS's; the list is endless. The only surprising thing is i…

Wasn't that Microsoft's playbook from the very beginning? Industry writers were commenting on that behaviour in the 80s and 90s. Microsoft was always better copying other people's ideas and outcompeting them in the late game.

Re: Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

#13

Post by nodata »

beagle3 wrote: post #7

I was involved with the effort [to avoid] standardizing instant messaging back in 1999-2000. One of the products the company I was with at the time was offering was an instant messenger (with a twist that is not important for this story), so we tried to support all the prevailing protocols of the time (AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, PowWow, IRC, ... I don't even remember). And I was eagerly following the i…

What do you see as the main problems with Jabber?

Re: Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

#14

Post by beagle3 »

mweibel wrote: post #9
beagle3 wrote: post #7

I was involved with the effort [to avoid] standardizing instant messaging back in 1999-2000. One of the products the company I was with at the time was offering was an instant messenger (with a twist that is not important for this story), so we tried to support all the prevailing protocols of the time (AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, PowWow, IRC, ... I don't even remember). And I was eagerly following the i…

Interesting insights you give here. Do you still think XMPP/Jabber is too complicated?

I haven't been following it since 2006 or so, but unless it got simpler since then, yes it very much is still too complicated. It does get the job done, and is in widespread use, and has multiple server and client implementations, which makes it a gazillion times better than almost anything else out there. Hats off.

It was unbearably chatty - to the point of being unusable as a server-to-server protocol in a high-load environment in 2003. internal protocols (and even external protocols such as OSCAR, ICQ, and MSN Messenger) required 10% of the bandwidth and 10% of the CPU power. Jabber was usable but very expensive as a client-to-server protocol.

Nowadays, CPU is much cheaper and so is bandwidth, so these problems are gone. And perhaps clients are better behaved and standardised now (I have no idea how video, file transfer, etc are handled these days; the answer back in the day was "not at all, or in a complex and non standardized way").

Re: Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

#15

Post by beagle3 »

nodata wrote: post #13
beagle3 wrote: post #7

I was involved with the effort [to avoid] standardizing instant messaging back in 1999-2000. One of the products the company I was with at the time was offering was an instant messenger (with a twist that is not important for this story), so we tried to support all the prevailing protocols of the time (AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, PowWow, IRC, ... I don't even remember). And I was eagerly following the i…

What do you see as the main problems with Jabber?

(see my EDIT:ADDED section above; I am not familiar with modern Jabber/XMPP; am/was talking about distant past)

Re: Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

#16

Post by Jugglernaut »

mweibel wrote: post #11
pilgrim689 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing it's the former. In the past 2 weeks I've heard MS submit a patch to Redis, they've helped bring Node.js to Windows, Phil Haack joined GitHub primarily to bring C# into that open source community's limelight,... and now this. Seems to me like someone's been pushing the open source agenda within Microsoft.

Seems like Microsoft is becoming more likeable recently. I hope this happens for their main products, too :)

They are not the Dark Knight anymore. The cape is fluttering in Cupertino now.

Re: Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

#17

Post by zokier »

nknight wrote: post #10
lloeki wrote: post #4

It still looks a bit rough, e.g "Roster management is not supported" . I wish it would not end up being just a client concern but also impact server-side at some point thanks to XMPP federation. Google Talk does federation but last time I checked Facebook Chat did not. Such a shame.

Apparently Messenger does link with Facebook and Yahoo, but I don't see anything indicating a general federation. It occurs to me that IM services have established a twisted, mutant, incompletely-routed version of an IRC network amongst themselves. And as far as I can tell, they still haven't gotten group chat right...

What's wrong with XMPP multi-user chat? And I don't understand your argument of "incompletely-routed", especially if compared to IRC. imho XMPP federation is much more powerful concept than IRC networking.

Re: Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

#18

Post by conradfr »

From a user point of view Microsoft butchered Messenger a long time ago. That's why Facebook killed it very easily.

First the official client (which I never stoud btw) became shittier with each release. Then they made that (very very) bad Facebook copy and forced users to display their real name instead of nicknames.

Moreover Messenger suffers from protocol version fragmentation. Features in alternative clients are random. Some people see nicknames, others real names, some are unaware that their real name is displayed. Sometimes you get old avatars, sometimes new ones, sometimes you don't even know that your avatar does not work. Same for offline messaging, and multi-connection.

And sadly Pidgin MSN's implementation SUCKS and it was a bad day when their survey indicated that people wanted up-to-date support and they just dismissed it.

Re: Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

#19

Post by nknight »

beagle3 wrote: post #7

I was involved with the effort [to avoid] standardizing instant messaging back in 1999-2000. One of the products the company I was with at the time was offering was an instant messenger (with a twist that is not important for this story), so we tried to support all the prevailing protocols of the time (AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, PowWow, IRC, ... I don't even remember). And I was eagerly following the i…

As someone deeply concerned with real-world operation of systems, I find your removal of the "claim" distressing.

It is true that developers routinely create very poorly thought out protocols that have massive overhead, but it is far from good practice, and anyone who tries to foist such a disaster on me for any reason other than business-critical interoperability will be SOL. I simply will not deploy it, they will have to go back and create something that is at least moderately sane.

XMPP does retain massive overhead, in excess of 50% even before considering the XML bloat (I'm just referring to redundant or otherwise unnecessary messages here), and that's the main reason I have refused to use it in my projects.

Re: Windows Live Messenger supports XMPP

#20

Post by darklajid »

zokier wrote: post #17
nknight wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently Messenger does link with Facebook and Yahoo, but I don't see anything indicating a general federation. It occurs to me that IM services have established a twisted, mutant, incompletely-routed version of an IRC network amongst themselves. And as far as I can tell, they still haven't gotten group chat right...

What's wrong with XMPP multi-user chat? And I don't understand your argument of "incompletely-routed", especially if compared to IRC. imho XMPP federation is much more powerful concept than IRC networking.

His argument seems to be that MS ties into Facebook Chat, but not using XMPP federation (since that seems to be disabled on FB's side).

So - it's behind the scene. It's (by a stretch) comparable to IRC links, maybe.

The complain about group chat was, as far as I understand the GP, not about XMPP multi-user chat, but about the inability to _use_ that if you're not using real XMPP federation. In other words: How do you start a group chat from GTalk with your MS Messenger / Facebook friends? The technology would support it, but 'they still don't get it right'. I agree.

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