jabber?

[Paul Lussier]

Hi all,

I seem to remember at one point that someone in the group was quite
familiar with jabber, but can't remember who.  Perhaps this will also
spark some conversation helpful to others as well.

Currently at work for "instant messaging", we use MIT Zephyr, which
pretty much pre-dates any IM protocol currently in wide use anywhere.
Some of the features of zephyr are:

  1. Strongly authenticated service (uses Kerberos auth, albeit v4, not v5)
  2. support for messages to:
    - individuals
    - multiple individuals (i.e. a Cc mechanism)
    - groups (called 'channels')
  3. support for message classes (i.e. subject threads)
  4. ability to send automated messages from cron, tests, etc.

Some of the problems with Zephyr are:

  1. limited clients 

      - unix-based clients include a curses-based app 'owl' and a
        command-line client suite zwrite/zwgc gaim claims support it,
        but requires being compiled with kerberos support, something
        almost no distro does to my knowledge.  There is also an emacs
        package for it, but it's rather limited in functionality.

      - Windows client is still beta after several years, and is a
        real pain to get working (I've never succeeded, but it's
        rumored to have worked somewhere at least once).

      - Mac client, MacZephyr, is okay.

  2. uses Kerberos v4 authentication
  3. support is being discontinued at some point in the not-too-distant future
  4. no real central logging
  5. not really under active development any more.
  6. not secure (authenticated yes, but messages pass in the clear)

We're considering switching to Jabber, because it seems to fulfill our
requirements.  It appears that it can autheticate against krb5, which
would be a huge win for us, and it appears to have decent
cross-platform client support, as well as central logging.

There even appear to be a couple of emacs-based jabber clients.

So, I guess my questions are this:

 1. Is anyone running a central jabber server at work for
    intra-company communication?
 2. Is anyone familiar with it's level of support for kerberos auth?
 3. How difficult is it to set up and maintain?
 4. What else do I need to know :)

Thanks.

-- 

Seeya,
Paul