Who owns the name Jabber

Jabber arrived in January 1999, when Jeremie Miller announced an open technology for instant messaging and presence, with the open source server jabberd at its centre. Three years later the base protocols had passed to the IETF under a new name, XMPP, while the old word had settled into trademark law. The protocol answers to its second name; the first one answers to a licence.

Where the word came from

The early project put the word everywhere: on the server, on the clients and code libraries, on the wire protocols for real-time XML streaming. jabberd 1.0 arrived in May 2000 and the base protocols for streaming, messaging, presence and contact lists stabilised; jabberd 1.2 followed in October with server dialback, a defence against address spoofing between servers. The word also sank into the protocol itself, as namespace strings such as jabber:iq:roster and http://jabber.org/protocol/offline, still on the wire today.

Miller had pledged the project’s support for the IETF standards process as early as August 1999, in line with a founding mission of freedom of conversation, open standards and interoperability. That pledge shaped what followed. The full timeline from jabberd to the RFCs covers the technical road; this page follows the word itself.

One mark, two gatekeepers

In August 2001 the Jabber Software Foundation formed to coordinate the open source projects and commercial entities building on the technology, and to manage its protocols through an open standards process. Two years later, as the IETF working group finished formalising the base protocols, Jabber Inc., a company now part of Cisco Systems, filed an IPR notice with the IETF concerning the JABBER trademark.

The guidelines published today state the arrangement plainly: the mark is registered, and its use is licensed through the XMPP Standards Foundation. For software under a commercial licence, and for the official names of for-profit companies, Cisco must also approve in writing. The word therefore has two gatekeepers: the foundation for nearly every use, Cisco behind it wherever commerce enters.

What needs no licence at all?

Descriptive use is free. A reference to Jabber as an instant messaging and presence technology, or an XML streaming technology, needs no licence in documentation; the ® symbol is requested there, but not required. Books, seminars and user groups may put the word in a title, provided the organiser’s own trademark sits prominently alongside it and no rights are claimed in the Jabber portion of the title, as in “Your Name Jabber User Group”.

Conferences work the same way: unless Cisco or the XSF sponsors the event in writing, the producer’s brand comes first and the title follows a “for Jabber” format, as in “YourName Conference for Jabber Developers”.

Strings on the wire are exempt

The sharpest line the guidelines draw sits inside the protocol. A protocol name containing JABBER counts as an opaque string and must be used unaltered, without the ® symbol, so that it stays a unique identifier. Using such identifiers in software, in documentation or in XML streams sent over the wire is fair use, with no licence attached. Marketing language carries the mark; the wire does not.

For fair uses in text or images, the guidelines offer an optional legend, “JABBER is a registered trademark and its use is licensed through the XMPP Standards Foundation”, for anyone who wants, in the page’s words, to be especially law abiding.

A domain name is a use like any other

A domain that incorporates JABBER can be fair descriptive use, on four conditions set out in the Jabber trademark usage guidelines: the domain and its site must not suggest sponsorship by or affiliation with Jabber Inc., now part of Cisco, nor that an associated product comes from that company; the owner must keep the mark out of unlicensed company, product or service names; and the site must not be derogatory or demeaning to the technology or the Jabber Community. The address may point at the technology; the word must stay descriptive.

And who runs the protocol itself?

In October 2002 the foundation contributed the base protocols to the Internet Standards Process and assigned change control over them to the IETF, under the name XMPP. RFC 3920 and RFC 3921 followed as Proposed Standards in October 2004, and RFC 6120 and RFC 6121 updated the core in March 2011; later revision work concentrated on security and internationalisation.

Extension work stayed with the foundation, which renamed its Jabber Enhancement Proposals to XMPP Extension Protocols in October 2006 and moved them to the xmpp.org site, then took its present name, the XMPP Standards Foundation, in January 2007, to reflect a focus on protocol extensions rather than open source software. How an extension becomes a standard is an open process, run that way since 2001.

Before the word goes on anything

Products face the strictest rules: no standalone “Jabber Server”, no “JabberLinux Client”. Open source software under an OSI approved licence may use the word once an application has been made and a licence granted, provided the legend sits conspicuously in the source code, the product complies with the specification, and no third party has already registered the name. A non-profit can license the name from the XSF alone; a for-profit also needs Cisco’s approval.

The grammar of the mark holds everywhere: an adjective before a generic noun, as in “Jabber protocol” or “Jabber software”, never a possessive, a plural or a verb. Before naming any project, site or user group after this technology, read the guidelines end to end and settle the licence together with the name.

xmpp.org is the site of the XMPP Standards Foundation, the body formed as the Jabber Software Foundation in 2001 to document the protocols and develop extensions in the open. It carries the year by year history of Jabber and XMPP, from the 1999 announcement through the RFC updates of 2011 and 2015 to the present, and the trademark usage guidelines that define what software, domains and organisations may do with the name.