I wish I had more to say... but all I can think of is: sounds good.
I think it would be a very very good idea to have *one person* be responsible for the client requirements for a particular year. A "Client Compliance Master 2005" or something... and eventually we could have a "Server Compliance Master 2006". That person has final say on what the requirements are, and has final say on whether particular things are or are not compliant. Perhaps we could vote for who this person is or make it a requirement to vote on their decisions or something, but for something as subjective as this I think it just makes more sense to have a final say, rather than leaving it all up to some kind of ambiguous discussion.
Also, I think initially we should try to get this running for clients, and then expand into servers, gateways, components...
Julian
On 17 Jun 2004, at 16:48, Rachel Blackman wrote:
So, Jabber has been around for a while now. It's a great architecture, we've all drunk the Kool-Aid as it were... but I've recently found a lot of frustration in one area, and I know from discussion in the jdev chatroom that I am far from the only one.
The thing is, there are all these very cool Jabber featuresets out there, but lots of them are not necessarily supported. Nor (other than peer pressure) is there much incentive for people to implement certain things. I can look at Jabber and go 'wow, pubsub is a cool backend system, Stream Initiation will let me do a lot of really cool things down the line' and be excited, but your average IM user (for instance, my mother or father) will look at Jabber and go 'why can't I set a nice little picture like under MSN? And why can't I use bold in my messages?' and so on. Jabber is, architecturally, probably the most advanced IM protocol out there, and it's a godsend to developers... but to end-users, it doesn't really replace the AIM featureset or whatever.
XHTML-IM has been a JEP for a rather long time, and few clients implement it (and moreover, some of them implement it in a nonstandard and wacky way!), and it's a fairly basic feature many IM end users look for. And there's no real incentive (other than peer pressure, as I said) for a client author to implement XHTML, so it ends up getting pushed further and further down TODO lists and suchnot.
So there was discussion in the chatroom today about a compliance and certification program, with varying levels of certification and differing requirements for the levels. Only certified clients would be on jabber.org's client list, certified clients would get the right to use a little 'certified' banner on their websites and in their documentation or whatever, and it would ensure featuresets /do/ get implemented for end-users.
I am writing up a quick proposal about how to do this. If enough folks like it (and there's not too much ensuing flamethrower usage in my direction), I will write it up in JEP format and submit it.
** PROPOSED JABBER CERTIFICATION PROGRAM **
Each certification would have a year attached to it. For instance, 'Jabber Basic Certified 2004' for a banner on a site. A certification only lasts until the end of a calendar year, and then you have to re-apply for certification; having a certification for a given year is not a guarantee you will have it next year. Certifications can have required features, and recommended features (i.e. 'MUST' and 'SHOULD').
The certification requirements for a calendar year would be set by a Jabber Certification Board, presumably appointed by the Council. The requirements for a given year would be decided on in July of the previous year, giving individuals six months to implement the features (and apply for certification ahead of time). For instance, if this program were in effect, next month the Certification Board would have to issue the certification requirements for 2005, giving all the developers time to implement the features and apply for certification before the end of 2004 (and thus the expiration of their existing certification).
To be certified, you would need to get a copy of the software in question to the Board to use, and they'd run it against some kind of validation suite. Presumably they'd have a process for testing, either certain automated things they could point to or a script for hand-testing it all. You could apply for more than one certification.
A couple examples of certification types are shown below. These are NOT actual proposals, just examples of what a certification list might be. You'd actually want much longer and more detailed certification criteria, of course.
Jabber Client Minimal - suitable for mobile or embedded clients - required : roster management - required : jid-to-jid chatting - recommended: groupchat-1.0
Jabber Client Intermediate - Suitable as a 'generic' client - required : all of Jabber Client Minimal - required : file transfer - required : disco - required : caps - recommended: XHTML-IM - recommended: avatars
Jabber Client Extended - Glitzier clients - required : all of Jabber Client Intermediate - required : xdata - required : MU-C - recommended: pubsub
...and so on. There would be certifications for servers, and you could even add usability guidelines as recommended things to the Client specifications, and so on.
Any thoughts?
--Rachel
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