Logo of the XMPP Standards Foundation
XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) is the foundation in charge of the standardization of the protocol extensions of XMPP, the open standard of instant messaging and presence of the IETF.
History
The XSF was originally called the Jabber Software Foundation (JSF). The Jabber Software Foundation was originally established to provide an independent, non-profit, legal entity to support the development community around Jabber technologies (and later XMPP). Originally its main focus was on developing JOSL, the Jabber Open Source License[1] (since deprecated), and an open standards process for documenting the protocols used in the Jabber/XMPP developer community. Its founders included Michael Bauer and Peter Saint Andre.
Process
Members of the XSF vote on acceptance of new members, a technical Council, and a Board of Directors. However, membership is not required to publish, view, or comment on the standards that it promulgates. The unit of work at the XSF is the XMPP Extension Protocol (XEP); XEP-0001[2] specifies the process for XEPs to be accepted by the community. Most of the work of the XSF takes place on the XMPP Extension Discussion List[3] and the jdev Chat Room (xmpp:[email protected]?join ).
Organization
Board of Directors
The Board of Directors[4] of the XMPP Standards Foundation oversees the business affairs of the organization. As elected by the XSF membership, the Board of Directors for 2011-2012 consists of the following individuals:
- Florian Jensen
- Dave Cridland (Chair)
- Mike Taylor
- Ashley Roach
- Chris Chris
Council
The XMPP Council[5] is the technical steering group that approves XMPP Extension Protocols, as governed by the XSF Bylaws and XEP-0001. The Council is elected by the members of the XMPP Standards Foundation each year in September. The eleventh XMPP Council (2011–2012) consists of the following individuals:
- Tobias Markmann
- Ralph Meijer
- Matthew Miller
- Kevin Smith (Chair)
- Matthew Wild
Members
There are currently 61 elected members[6] of the XSF.
Emeritus Members
The following individuals are emeritus members of the XMPP Standards Foundation:
- Ryan Eatmon
- Peter Millard (deceased)
- Jeremie Miller
- Julian Missig
- Thomas Muldowney
- Dave Smith
XEPs
One of the most important outputs of the XSF is a series[7] of XEPs. Some have chosen to pronounce "XEP" as if it was spelled "JEP", rather than "ZEP", in order to keep with a sense of tradition. Some XEPs of note include:
- Data Forms[8]
- Service Discovery[9]
- Multi-User Chat[10]
- Publish-Subscribe[11]
- XHTML-IM[12]
- Entity Capabilities[13]
- Bidirectional-streams Over Synchronous HTTP (BOSH)[14]
- Jingle[15]
- Serverless Messaging[16]
XMPP Summit
The XSF biannually holds a XMPP Summit where software and protocol developers from all around the world meet and share ideas and discuss topics around the XMPP protocol and the XEPs. In winter it takes place around the FOSDEM event in Brussels, Belgium and in summer it takes place around the OSCON event in Portland, USA. These meetings are open mainly to developers and not so much to marketing people with no costs attached for the participants. However the XSF is open to donations. The first XMPP Summit took place on July 24 and 25, 2006, in Portland.[17]
References
External links
