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Presence & ProtocolAn independent guide to Jabber and XMPP

Layer 02 · History

History: from jabberd to the XMPP RFCs

Jabber becoming XMPP, in order: the 1999 announcement, the 2002 working group, the 2004 RFCs and the trademark still sitting under the name.

A stack of early-2000s printed mailing-list threads and conference notes on a table.

The name Jabber was announced in January 1999. The protocol behind it was handed to the IETF in 2002, standardised as XMPP, and published as RFCs in October 2004. Between those dates sit a server, a foundation, a working group and a trademark, and each of them still shows up somewhere in the vocabulary people use today. This layer lays the sequence out with the dates the foundation itself publishes, and separates what changed from what only got renamed.

In this layer

  1. A long paper timeline taped across a wall, years written in marker, notes clipped along its length.

    From jabberd to the XMPP RFCs: a timeline

    Not quite six years separate a personal announcement from an IETF Proposed Standard. Each step is dated, and each one changed something.

  2. A brass rubber stamp and its ink pad on a leather desk blotter, lit from one side.

    Who owns the name Jabber

    Two names, two owners, one network. The confusion is old, documented, and easy to clear up.

Every essay in this layer is written against the reference page on the three stanza types, and two neighbouring layers extend it: Protocol and Servers.